The Waltz






  You are beautiful like the stone,
oh my dead one;
alive, oh alive, you are beautiful like the nave.
This orchestra that agitates
my cares like a negligence,
like an elegant welcoming of fine tone,
ignores the hair of the pubis,
ignores the laugh that bursts from the sternum like a great baton.


   Some waves of bran,
a little sawdust in the eyes,
or by chance on the temples,
or perchance adorning the tresses.
Some large skirts built from crocodile tails.
Some tongues or smiles made of
      crab shells.
All that is sufficiently seen
can surprise no one.

The women guard their moment seated on a
          tear,
dispensing humidity by force of an insistent fan.
And the gentlemen abandoned at their backs
long to attract their glances by force of their
          mustaches.

      But the waltz has arrived.
It is a beach without waves,
a clash of shells, of heels, of foam or
        false teeth.
It is everything that reverts that arrives.
      Exuberant chests with trays in arms,
sweet tarts fallen on sobbing shoulders,
a langour that draws back,
a surprised kiss in the instance that would make “hair
       of an angel”
a sweet “yes” of crystal painted green.

    A sprinkling of sugar on foreheads
lends a candid whiteness to polished words,
and the hands that shrink crimped more than ever
as the vestments wrinkle, formed from beloved weeds

       Heads are clouds, music is a large gum,
the leaden tails almost sail, and the clamor
has devolved in hearts and surgings of blood,
in liquor, if white, that knows by memory or date.

     Goodbye, goodbye, emerald, amethyst, or mystery;
goodbye, the instant has arrived like a giant ball,
the precise moment of the naked head below,
when the hairs go to pinch the obscene lips that
         know.
It is the instant, the moment to utter the word that explodes,
the moment when the vestments will become words,
the windows screams,
the lights a cry for help,
and the kiss that was (in the corner) between two mouths
becomes a thorn
delivering death that says:
I love you.




Vicente Aleixandre