Vision
by Delmira Agustini
Was it perhaps in an imagined frame, in the bottomless mirror of desire, or was it divinely and simply in real life that I saw you watch me sleep the other night? In my alcove enlarged with loneliness and dread, quietly, you appeared by my side, like a gigantic mushroom, dead and alive, budding in the corners of the night, damp with silence, glistening with shadow and with loneliness. You bent supremely over me, as if toward the crystal chalice of a lake on the desert’s altar-cloth of fire; you turned to me as one invalided by life turns to his infallible opiates and to the stony bandages of Death. You leaned toward me in the way the believer does toward the spotless oblation of the Host… –Morsel of snow with the savor of stars that feeds the lilies of mortal flesh, spark of God to apotheosize the spirit-. You leaned over me as the great willow of Melancholy does over the deep lagoons of silence; you loomed over me as the marble tower of Pride, quarried by a monster of sadness, does over the solemn sister of its own shadow… You bent over me as if my body were the majuscule initial of your fate written on the dark page of my bed; you leaned out over me as if toward the miracle of a window open on the furthest beyond. And even beyond all these you leaned! And my glance was a snake fanged between the bramble of eyelashes, toward the reverent swan of your body. And my lust was a snake slipping between cliffs of shadow toward the lily statue of your body. Further you leaned, and further…and so far, so far you leaned, that my sexual flowers have doubled their size, Your entire life is printed on mine… Apprehensively I waited for the wing-beat of the magnificent embrace; an embrace of four arms that beatitude dresses in fever and miracle; it may be flight! And it may be that those enchanted arms are four roots of a new race. Apprehensively I waited for the wing-beat of the magnificent embrace…      And when I opened my eyes to you like a soul, I saw you edging backwards, wrapping yourself in I know not what huge fold of darkness!
