Rise to be born with me, brother.
Give me your hand out of the deep
region seeded by all your grief.
You won’t come back from bottom rock.
You won’t come back from time under ground.
No coming back with your hardened voice.
No coming back with your drilled-out eyes.
Look at me from the bottom of earth,
plowman , weaver, voiceless shepherd:
trainer of guardian llamas:
mason on a dangerous scaffold:
water-bearer of Andean tears:
goldsmith with fingers bruised:
farmer trembling over the seed:
potter spilled on your clay:
bring all your age-old buried
griefs to the cup of this new life.
Show me your blood and your furrow,
say to me: here I was punished
when a gem didn’t shine or the earth
give forth its stone or grain on time:
mark me the stone you stumbled on
and the wood they crucified you on,
strike light for me from your old flints,
the ancient lamps, the whiplash stuck
within your wounds through centuries,
and the axes’ brightness stained with blood.
I come to speak through your dead mouth.
All through the earth join all
the silent wasted lips
and speak from the depths to me all this long night
as if I were anchored here with you,
tell me everything, chain by chain,
link by link, and step by step,
file the knives you kept by you,
drive them into my chest and my hand
like a river of riving yellow light,
like a river where buried jaguars lie,
and let me weep, hours, days, years,
blind ages, stellar centuries.
Give me silence, water, hope.
Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.
Fasten your bodies to me like magnets.
Hasten to my veins to my mouth.
Speak through my words and my blood.