44

ATALANTA

Words you are saying
—«affection ... always ... certain ...!»—
with slow voice, quiet expression.
Shuttered, curtained-off
double windows
guillotine temptations.
(Horizons, winds, roads).
The sky is the ceiling, all
in the color you wanted,
no constellations, nothing to guide us.
Door ajar to the bedroom —yours,
mine— that marries rejections.

But there, beyond everything,
your destiny appears so clearly.

Not even that storybook shoe,
the glass one, fragile, high-heeled,
not even that hair —so neatly
arranged, domesticated, smooth—
can fool me. The lands that
you will discover, the horizon
you may divide, the sky
you might climb
are already trembling.

I see you, your heel in the air,
so quiet here with me,
your hair blowing free in the wind
—the apples I would throw to you—
and then I see
the myth, ancient elevator,
that lifts you into fable.