The Dead Angels




Search, search for them:
in the insomnia of forgotten pipes,
in the river beds interrupted by the silence of debris.
Not far from the puddles incapable of guarding a cloud,
some eyes lost,
a broken ring
or a trampled star.
Because I have seen them:
in that momentous trash that appears
      in a mist.
Because I have touched them:
in the remote earth of a morbid brick,
they have come to the nothing from a tower or a wagon.
Nothing beyond the chimneys which collapse
or those tenacious leaves that you stamp on with your shoes.

In all of this.
Even more in that vagrant kindling that is consumed without
     fire,
in those buried absences that suffer broken down furniture,
at a small distance from the names and signs
that cool down in the walls.

Search.  Search for them:
below the drop of wax that buries the word
       of a book
or the signature on the corners of cards
that brings rolling in the dust
Near the helmet lost by a bottle,
by a sole missing in the snow,
a shaving knife discarded at the border
      of a cliff


Rafael Alberti