All I ask ...

All I ask is that you do me this favor:
do not come any closer.

Retain that perfect distance
wherein I may discern your figure,
but not your features.

That perfect distance
wherein I can hear you,
but you cannot hear me.

Do me
this favor,
this small favor,
this simple favor,

and you and I may remain
as we are forever.

Come any closer,
and we may lose everything.

Symphony No. 7

The clouds formed
with the first movement,
darkened with the second,
and advanced in a line
with the third
and forth.

They followed
as I drove home,
as I opened the door,
as I slipped under the covers.

They hovered
as I closed my eyes,
as I played the notes again in my mind,
as I came to these questions:

Which is more of a man:
the one looking down from the top
or the one looking up from the bottom?

Who is this woman
in the music?

Who is the impostor:
the one standing next to her
or the one next to whom she stands?

With these,
I heard the first few drops
and then the rain came in waves
as everything that had accumulated
emptied itself into the streets.

We take that which is ...

We take that which is beautiful
to be true,
that which is beautiful,
but not true,
to be excusable,
that which is ugly
to be false,
that which is ugly,
but not false,
to be ordinary.

We take what we have for granted
and we take what we do not have ...

we take what we do not have.

Those few who give
are drained
and those many who take
are never satisfied.

What do we do, then?

We give
only to those who give
and we never take ...

we never take.

A Thousand Eyes

A thousand eyes come to rest
in arabesque pechée,
phalanges,
metatarsi,
tarsi,
tibia and fibula,
femur,
ascending
from crypts to spires,
stones from
Figueres and Vilafranca,
Lleida,
Montjuïc,
Garraf,
one on top of another.

Do they know they're the same:
the dancer and the mason,
the choreographer and the architect?

Which of them can understand
the thousand tears?

Which of us can still see the beauty
in something we hold so close?

Barefoot across Burning Coals

I don't believe for a second
that people walk barefoot across burning coals
and reach the other side unscathed.

I've never done anything of the sort,
but I imagine it would go something like this:

I would begin.
It doesn't matter how.
I would step on the ash
and avoid the coals.

Simple.

I would soon realize,
however, that the ash was hot too
and the coals were unavoidable.

In the midst of the searing pain,
I would need a new strategy.

It would be this:

At the risk of losing my feet
up to the ankles,
leaving cauterized stumps in their places,
I would make it to the other end.

And if I stumbled,
at the risk of losing my hands
up to the wrists,
I would make it to the other end.

And if someone then asked me
how I did it,
I would respond,
jumping up and down on two stumps and
waving the other two in the air:

I decided to.

Lost

"I thought I'd lost you,"
said the earth.

"Where would I go?"
replied the air.

"The moon could not hold me
and the sun would only use me."

"No, I could not go."

"Perhaps you mistook the wind
for my departure."

Maple Leaves Blushing

maple leaves blushing,
landing alone on a liquid landscape,
rushing,
converging within the outstretched arms
of a mill at the end of the run,

(even Feynman moved in only one direction)

blown over by the wind they once embraced,
turning faster and more uselessly
than ever before,

maple leaves trailing in their wake,
facing each other as if to say,
as they descend:

"... your satin robes are softer than mine,
your branching veins more perfect,
your gradients more subtle ..."

forward and forward,
up Escher's stairs,
endlessly

moving forward, turning corners,
moving forward, turning corners,
moving forward, turning corners,

but never ascending.