Winter
To Sandra
To live a winter,
your roots must rest
and the water freeze in your core.
Stay motionless, white, almost imperceptible.
Do not bear fruit; it is not
the season to blossom.
Survive winter, do not
become it.
The weight of snow on your branches
will make them bow
and some to break.
You are not those branches.
You are the growing, severing, and healing,
life itself, shaped as a healing wound.
Make no sudden movements.
A frozen log will burst
if tossed into flames.
It is winter and someone is drawing you.
Nearly invisible, white, blossomless.
Only your body, your closed eyes, frozen water.
They have no love for spring,
but for your life, full of endurance,
still existing, no matter how cold.
Dance
A life is one big
sowing of seeds, or of sandcastles
that crumble into a beach after their
fleeting joy. Not for sale –
our suitcase holds
masks worn until threadbare,
forced upon us by pain long past.
Labor, a sacrificial dance –
our lives are one big
sowing of sacrificial dances;
one big shooting of errors and arrows from the hip.
We anticipate a hint that we’re chosen,
but there is no one to decide it.
Nobody invites us to the dance floor,
it’s always empty
before we, with awkward uncertainty,
step onto it to the beat
of our own absurd offerings.
Translated by Adam Cullen
