Little Infinite Poem

For Luis Cardoza y Aragón

To take the wrong road
is to arrive at snow
and arriving at snow
is to graze for centuries on graveyard weeds.

To take the wrong road
is to arrive at woman,
woman fearless of light,
woman who kills two cockerels in a flash,
light which doesn’t fear cockerels
and cockerels that can’t crow on snow.

But if snow gets the wrong heart
the South Wind may come,
and since air pays moans no heed,
we’ll have to graze on graveyard weeds again.
I saw two sorrowing wax spikes of wheat
burying a volcanic landscape,
and two mad weeping children
pushing a murderer’s eyeballs.

But two has never been a number;
it is anguish and its shadow,
the demonstration of another’s infinity,
the dead man’s ramparts
and the punishment of new and endless resurrection.

Dead men hate the number two,
but that number lulls women to sleep,
and as woman fears light,
and light trembles before cockerels,
and cockerels can only fly above the snow,
we’ll have to graze for good on graveyard weeds.