To Flee



How he’ll toss me out to roam
over the world without form!
How he’ll direct me to run
driving an auto without shadow.

By the landscape without form
elusive . . . skidding:
in fleeing and in fleeing
transfused . . . thawed.

By mountains without memory,
by useless seas, insomniac,
of sulphur, silver, and mercury . . .
total amnesia, unfrozen.

How he’ll direct me to run
-- nights, trails, seas, names,
haste, clouds, towers, worlds --

without return -- liberation --
What inmate -- free -- in escape!
With haste at his back, left behind.
Free -- what inmate! -- in escape.

How he’ll direct me to run
driving an auto without shadow;
without the support of the day,
freed of yesterday and of tomorrow . . .
untied, white, eternal!


Emilio Ballagas