Jamas Volveré

To touch the sidereal limits with the hands—Otero

To see you is to see a warm brown bird
flash in a black night: I shudder.

Gone are the stars that are not the sun
that punctuate heights no longer heights,
heights become space. Things I will never know
with my proximity senses are gone, all gone:

I will never hear a star upon this earth,
but I feel the warm gusts your wings stir up.
If in the daytime I were to leave bread and fruit for you,
you might come again. I am not so different from
the mangrove swamp where you play.

Dedicated to the victims of the Park Avenue gas explosion in El Barrio.