Selected poems from “Música i escorbut”

Today, a children’s programme reminded me,
or taught me, rather, how it is that planes are able to fly.
Because of the shape of the wing, the air passing over it
moves faster and is, therefore, of lower pressure than
the air beneath it.
If I could make my arms have an upper surface and an underneath
and I could run a lot beside the sea and next to soft things,
I could fly to where you are.
But all the places on my body are round:
time is round, the sky is round, loneliness too; death
is round as an eye, as a cough. And even my name
ends the way it begins, arbutus-fruit from an autumn
that’s already old, a berry that ripens and withers, shrinks,
grows rounder and rounder, gripping fear’s branch.
Falling can also mean flying, and in losing myself I can find myself,
when I give up counting the days.