Juvenal Soto

You arrived like an odd insect That, upon extending its wings, Belongs to all yet to no one in particular.

The grapevine beetle knows That its time was summer and locusts, And that before that sweltering heat and that music Life is a bale of hay, darkness, and a thin membrane.

It recognizes a purple shell wherein The female, quietly lurking, Yearns to be fire and fruit.

That summer of nineteen hundred and something, I withstood the calumny of my life Like an emblem of molten silver, Without shade, but rich in fruit so sweet That milk and honey were nothing.

Milk, honey, streams Where insects shine And death shimmers when you call my name.

From my neck, Elsa, you dangle snow. It goes burning with me, as we so wished.

The deities of dream Take their afternoon stroll down this street Leading to the sea.

This avenue is neither Broad nor beautiful, But the African-born wind rises And leaves something here Akin to the warm And domestic happiness Of those who don’t ask why.

The clouds sketch The outline of the travelers Who discover the waves and pray For their dead children, Or for the ones that never arrived, Like this treeless street In whose shade the dog May recognize its master And know how music Is not solely from the world That sleeps and dreams, Nor from those gods Who stroll through the evening And walk down to the sea Should there be something adrift Even close to This happiness.

His flesh, pale as the marble Fashioned into the destiny of his days, Is on display in the show window Of a nearby antiques store on The Alameda de Hércules. As for his soul, if he had one, No one is sure what merchant Might now possess it. Two centuries after Christ, Someone did make sure that a block Of purest stone render him immortal, Like the flight of birds Or the ebb and flow of the tides.

I invited him to dine with me, To share lamb, And his story and the stories Of those who were his companions. He was reticent and noticeably uncomfortable But the wine brought to his memory The fire of other nights, And he inquired as to the names Of my wife and children and of other kin. In a voice that sounded most like The pastor’s song to his flock, He spoke of the fire that leveled someone’s heart, Someone very dear to him In the port of Hadrian’s city.

I realized that the place was not accurate, but that his story was When, as we stood before the sprawling river, He spoke to me of its waters As the greatest ever seen by a Roman. I knew then that the birthmark Gracing his breast Was but a trace left by the years spent under the silt.

I feared for my life, So distant until that night; For just as one river covered his heart, So another likely covers Marble stone in the city of the dead.

I then placed two coins On that ruin And walked into the night, Again alone, knowing now with certainty About myself and about many others, We who are not even torsos of the ancient past.

This city was not a matter for men, But its river was, as were those who therein dwelt Much to the surprise of its waters.

If cobalt were the purest of colors, The Tigris would be not the river of purity, But the form of purity racing to the sea, There where it dissolves among Shipwrecks and algae, And the great bull whales That swim southward should the world of man End there, There where dawn, no longer part of the night, Is born.

The emperor thus knows That in his birth there was a river, A dream of sweet waters From which issues, since his youth, Deep and bitter, the form of his life. And another form, the way of Being here: barely a memory, And fire and water.

This city was not a matter for men, But its river was. Those who therein dwelt know That neither cities nor men Are matters of much import to rivers.