If I could, I would climb to

the highest of your ramifications,

choose the warmest of your branches,

and there build a nest

for my desires. Then,

one by one, I would string the

songs the wind sings in

your leaves, braid in

the laughter of the birds and allow myself

Your charts (wonderful

imperfections), etched

haphazardly on your body, are

lanes where the canoes of my

imagination navigate.

If on some days, passing

indifferently, I do not notice them,

it does not mean I am alienated

from you. It means (horrible

confession) that I am alienated

from myself.

The wind whistles in your old

branches strange songs.

Yesterday you were almost nothing

and today you are almost nothing.

Between the roots, at your feet,

seeds that will give rise to

your rebirth in other beings,

remind me that my words,

on paper, whenever they are read,

will also be the agents of my

rebirth. For an instant, I imagine

"eternity" to be but that.

The thorns which

protect you, do not let me

touch you. I look at you and feel

the prickly armor with

which I adorn myself and that

"protect" me, isolating me

from my surroundings.

Again I look at you and

ask myself: Why?

I feel as if it were on mine,

my sister, the wound they

laid on your breast. Later,

at daybreak, I'll return.

I know I won't be able

to cure your suffering, but

I promise to pick some of

your fruits and take them to

lands where the only known

weapons are the twinkling

of sunbeams, at dawn, and

the roaring of the children's

laughter, when the day is done.

I observe the harmony with which

your trunk sustains its branches.

Scratching you ever so lightly,

I inhale the sap of your entrails.

I feel inebriated. Your body

awakens in me unsuspected

sensuality's.

A stranger walks

by. Solemn, I step back and

examine you with a calculated

cataloguing pose. Did he ...

notice? I take leave. bidding you