For this first frost
I set a trap :your grave
as if some candy bar once unsealed
would flow again - with each step
I'm falling through the Earth
overtaking name by name.
You did not come tonight, the dirt
must still be warm from fruit
and sandwiches - at the door
with one hand out
I tell something to eat
not to forget where it eats
where it sleeps and in half.
HEBERTO PADILLA·
The Rose,
its
specter
(Rilke)
The rose is above
and the thorn below.
When Rilke bends down
to pick the rose,
he is unaware, the poor man,
that its specter pursues him
(and transfigures him),
because all beauty
is glory and disaster.
·Selected from
A Fountain, A House of Stone
by Heberto Padilla. translated by Alastair
Reid and Alexander Coleman. to be published in November by Farrar. Straus
&
Giroux.
Translation copyright
<0
1991 by Alastair Reid and Alexander Coleman. All rights re–
served
