You Shattered

Carla Rossi

The unnumbered, enormous, scattered, gray stones
still throbbing against secret slings
of suffocated primal flames
or to the terror of the relentless caresses
of Amazon rushing waters,
rigid above the dazzling sand
along an empty horizon, don’t you remember?

And the leaning Araucaria, huge in its longing,
that opened toward 
the only gathering of shade in the valley 
twisting its lonely fibers into hard flint,
more resistant than the other cursed trees,
its mouth fresh with butterflies and grass
where it parted from its roots
don’t you remember? Raving, silent,
above a three-span rounded pebble,
magically appeared
in a perfect, precarious balance?

From branch to branch, gold-crested wren, 
your greedy eyes drunk with awe,
you conquered the mottled summit,
bold, musical child
only to see again in the shining bed
of a deep and still ocean abyss
mythical tortoises
reawakening among seaweed.

The untempered tension of nature
with the undersea pomp,
deathly omens. 

You used to raise your arms as wings
giving birth back to the wind 
running in the weight of still air.

Nobody ever saw your light
dancing foot touch the ground.

You, graceful joy, 
how could you not have shattered 
in such an inflexible blindness,
you, innocent breath, pure crystal.

A flash of light too human for the heartless,
savage, relentless, stubborn
roar of a glaring sun.