May the hide of the earth split beneath my feet,
May the valve of the sky open and show me
The high niche of the sun or the immense reach of the stars.
I shall fear nothing.
Does Death call me? Will it at least offer me
A mirror, a sheet of light where I can glimpse
My profile beyond the grave?
I am a seeding branch of this world,
My dreams flourish in the sunlight
Not in the gloomy swarming of the molluscs,
I balance myself in the wind;
I dizzy myself with all the gifts of day and night,
In passing I pluck the drunken birds from space: take them!
The serpent comes here each morning to my patch of dew
To lap at the source of his cry!
Like him, I throw myself ever higher and further,
No one sees how I prosper in the shadow of my secret;
I shall not respond to that call which rises from the thickets
Of the night.
Let the sea flow back upon itself with its cargo
Of salt and fishes! Let the sky split its azure lining!
Let the sun burst in a tourniquet of fire!
Why shouldn’t it start with the elements?
I am at the dawn of a people beginning a long march:
I shall see them break from their coop in all the sweat
Of their souls, as the sun breaks from the channels of the East
In a great transpiration of Light!
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