Three birds of the sea, three sunbeams, three scissors
crossed the cold sky toward Antofagasta:
that’s why the air was left trembling,
why everything trembled like a wounded flag.
Loneliness, give me the sign of your ceaseless origins,
the path-hardly a path-of the cruel birds,
the palpitation that surely comes
before honey, music, the sea, a birth.
(Loneliness sustained by a constant face-
like a calm slow flower, constantly held out-
till it reaches the pure swarming throngs of the sky.)
Cold wings of the sea, of the archipelago, went
flying toward the sands of northeast Chile.
The night slid shut its heavenly bolt.