mi corazón es desierto
The prettiest poem by Hafiz could not match the delicate brilliance of a flower in bloom, and the dance a pollinator performs in its duty. The most passionate poem by Rumi could not express the love it takes for that scene to happen.
In the desert, the stars brush a kiss on the sand.
*
verão, outono, inverno, primavera, verão
[ a poem, a prayer, a dream, an acknowledgement, a truth ]
I. Solstício de verão
abre-me o coração feito o cacau
que me entregou nas mãos
e disse come
abre-me os olhos feito o cacto
que me serviu nos lábios
e disse vem
abre-me o caminho feito o fogo
que nos dissolveu em brasa
e disse amanhece
[Summer solstice]
open my heart as the cocoa
you’ve put in my hands
saying eat
open my eyes as the cactus
you’ve served on my lips
saying come
open my way as the fire
dissolved us into ember
saying rise
II. Autumn equinox
I summon the gentle waves by the lake shore nested in the shadows of the ancestral bellies of the earth, warm breasts with hot fumes, visible orange over the peaks deep into clear nights, the hot breath of creation, that which always means destruction, by the natural balance. May the calm waters of the glacial lake clear our minds and awake our bodies to the ever-changing that is being. May the possibilities that surface be fertile and fruitful. Let me be brave in the face of the winds that carry the clouds onwards. Make me courageous and willing. Teach me to honour my fire, kindle and nurture it, to keep it shimmering. May I keep a crystalline surface so I can see what lies at the bottom of my feelings. Make me the glacial lake and the volcano that nests it. Make me alive with passion and calm in my thoughts. May my actions be gentle and fierce, and always true to the desire that makes my heart sing and dance. Make me firewood in the bonfire of love. Make me glow. Make me burn.
III. Winter solstice
When I took the cacti and stepped aside from my physical pain, it was there, just a few inches ahead of me, but not in me, so I could acknowledge it without being driven by its force. I’ve been having the weirdest dreams. One of them involved a huge flying horse, invisible and black, that I had to ride in order to get to where I needed to. I had to hold tight onto its large neck and let the night of death take me onwards.
IV. Spring equinox
I desired the courage to open myself fully to that ever so fertile yes. I tried to hold the desire in suspension, I wanted it to last unchanged, crystallized. The sufis say that whatever structure that becomes too rigid and crystallized gets obsolete and collapses. But what with desire? It gets rancid. Sour. It ferments. In fermenting, other life forms develop from the former, shifting its shape, making it anew. Desire is too rich in life to crumble as a caustic rock. If it were a mineral, it’d be molten lava, charcoal. Full of billions of micro-cavities that could house the tiniest living microbial shapes. Arrogant of me to suspect the entirety of responsibility for such a force. Of course, it is always shared between the participants, by a natural balance. Co-held as roots can only hold a chunk of soil with the participation of one another. A single root doesn’t hold anything, it has to be plural, together with the mycelium that swirls and entangle them. Desire is mycelial material. And it means participation. It demands integration.
Pulsing, pulling, shimmering, ever-changing in the spirals of time are all life forms. Unstoppable kinesis: the beautiful scene at the end of Tarkovsky’s Stalker comes to my mind in a flash, glimmering with truth. The intent desire moving the glass. So the never-sprouted neither-killed loving desire shifted in its seedling and shaped new landscapes, and diverse elements combined to give way to different paths to thread on. Movement, constant as ever with its numerous changing rhythms, keeps life going: now a green leaf under a pink bloom that feeds the bees housed in the nooks at my windowsill, then a caterpillar just on the verge to cocoon, and then again, a falcon towering high in the sky, soon to become a mushroom spore and get carried off to help shape cloud-like stories that will rain down in a sudden temperature change after colliding with a hot-air current, showering over my dancing body.
V. Solstício de verão
Mi corazón es desierto, y vos sos arena.