I am Destiny

Yes, I have desired you intensely.
Why kiss your lips, if one knows death is near,
if one knows that to love is merely to forget life,
to close the eyes to the present dark
in order to open them on a body's shining boundaries?

I don't want to read in books a truth which rises slowly like an ocean,
I renounce that mirror mountains offer everywhere,
naked rock where my face is reflected
crossed by birds whose meaning I don't know.

I don't want to mirror rivers where fish ruddy with the flush of life
attack the restraining banks of their desire,
rivers from which prodigious voices rise in rebellion,
portents I don't understand strewn among the reeds.

No, I refuse; I decline to swallow that dust, that pitiful earth, that eroded sand,
that certainty of life as long as flesh receives the Sacrament
when it knows that the world and this body
spin like that portent the celestial eye doesn't understand.

No, I refuse to cry out, raise my voice,
fling it out like that stone which smashes itself against the forehead,
breaking the windows of that monstrous heaven
behind which no one heeds the murmur of life.

I want to live, to live like the stubborn grass,
like the north wind or snow, like the watchful coal,
like the future of an as yet unborn son,
like the embrace of lovers when the moon is aware of them.

I am the music the world makes in its mysterious flight
beneath the tails of numerous comets,
innocent bird with blood on its wings
that dies in a despairing breast.

I am destiny summoning everyone who loves,
unique sea to which all loving radii will come
which seek its centre, fluted on the circumference
that spins like the murmurous and absolute rose.

I am the horse kindling its mane against the naked wind,
I am the lion tormented by its virility,
the timid gazelle at the neutral river's edge,
the destructive tiger that tyrannises the jungle,
the tiny beetle that also shines by day.

No one can be unaware of the living presence,
of what is valid in the face of hostile clamour,
that displays its transparent breast like a window,
yet in spite of its transparency will never be glass,
because if you approach your hands, you will feel the blood.