Fire and Nothing

I’m not ashamed of anything anymore.

The sun has set on the world. The desired fruit will erupt

With night. A voice dreaming of itself finds treasure,

A distant wall where my ship has been bricked up.

I guard my pride in that wall, I sing

More beautifully — than I do free — immured.

Where do I get the strength to resist my being,

When vines cannot resist, nor the fertile vineyard!

To live without the self: a strange desire?

To want a poem without a poet? Time,

From the oblivious past, does it admire

The betrayal of my thwarted design?

Does that mean saying to change: Not for

Me! And let the poem change itself? Furthermore

To dedicate myself to beast and flower

And lend my strength to black roots’ hunger?

I’m not ashamed to sing behind a wall

Better in such night than free elsewhere.

The sun stings my heel. The blazing wall

At the end of the road — it leads nowhere.