Letters for Those to be Slain

(1)

They left nothing but the violet

Creeping over the fence of the house;

It moves confidently to their letterbox

And takes the pulse of my letter.

How the sugar has gone down!

They left nothing at home but the home.

She was dropping words into the meaning

And ascending in the poem

Opening the window for the trees.

My neighbour became angry;

Her trees were missing.

The horse ascends two floors of song

And the orchard takes off from the day that follows.

She was alone hunting her cloud

And released the cherries of metaphor behind it.

Whenever she tries, she will be wrong

Her most beautiful mistake is not recognising

The masculine inside her,

And she forgets her role

Completely.

They left nothing at home but their farewell

And they relieve themselves of us

As if rhythm

Were tight over expression’s hips.

Like two slender women

She falls ill of maturity

And transmits the fever to my language.

(2)

They did not leave their names.

They were in a rush

Laying the path in front of their steps

And they gushed forth in their shirts.

Simply:

They were in a rush.

And I was saying

Delay a little,

Move this lake away from our city

Because it always returns wet.

Delay, the youngest of them was saying

If by chance

On the way to your funeral procession

You meet a boy

Into whose voice song had slipped

And in whose hands, the eloquence of the neighbours’ cypress had grown

Then say to him:

If they besiege you

And you do not find anyone but yourself

In a swift death 

O brother, go to death

But die slowly.

(3)

The war changed you.

You were arriving in your white shirts

Descending the stairs of rhythm

Slowly, elegantly.

O brother

Did the war change you?

You began arriving in your white shirts

But landing on the rhythm in haste

Elegant, as ever.

And you became winged

Your feet tied with a star.

And you left on memory’s shelf, forgotten

The old tobacco, the lute, the violet,

And the neighbour's daughter

A library sleeping on the dust of time. 

You are unlike all the city’s sons

Ready for flight, and for war.

You are unlike all…

Ah, when the war becomes as a school anthem

Any child may sing on his way

Without causing harm.

Why do we become the victims?

Why us?

O Lord...

How have you allowed children to dispatch all this death?

Thank you

Your letters struck us

And as usual we forgive – in haste

And like good people…we will pretend

That we have lost our memory.