Two Poems from Peru

Limbo

One day I placed a rock on top of your name
and I said to myself: I’ll go singing all the way home.
And I sang
like a wild woman on powerful legs
like a wild river I sang.
Until the song began turning into a tiny trickle
(that wouldn’t even feed the peas)
And with every step
my feet started stumbling. 
I can’t see the tiled roof of my house 
or the tallest tree
did I leave my heart under that rock?
my stupid heart, beside your name?

I know I’ll never make it home now. 
I also know I can’t turn back.

Pequod Speaks

Oh the many ropes and whale teeth
adorning me as I wait for combat or in my war cry
only baby teeth against the beast 
and the forecastle, the stern,
the bowsprit, the mainmast
or the swelling sails
better to have simply been a coffin
or to have never left the port
never felled the trees that made me 
sail
I could give a damn about 
the oil that moves the world
I vomit overboard 
because of the turns
the world makes
ah if many hands
would have waited in their place
from the start
in stays, fixed
(like your beautiful heart:
esparto ball
against the water trails)
blocked
blinded hands
motionless since forever
I still would see carrying on 
in the forests of Arrowhead 
nameless, unstoried 
happy, tiny, light butterflies
on me
and not these petulant vultures,
surging, insatiable waves . . 

Translations from the Spanish