On that ruddy evening, after our day in the countryside,
at last we reached the spring, together,
which was water in silence, mineralized in the depths
of the earth’s fire, almost wholly in silence.
We reached a dream after the plains. A dream,
but true. Blue and ochre waters surrounding us
on that unreal evening. And I remember other things:
the sweeping land, the color of the salts,
the embraces, the kiss: I closed my eyes
and the world dissolved
into a placid surge of joyful emptiness.
Just two existed, that was all:
the taste of lips, a tender nakedness.
Only two bodies close and loving in the desert
of time and the world,
and overhead, an open skylight
among nitrous trunks
—which once were trees, sweet huizaches
or mezquites of the arduous world—
revealed a purple sky, barely visible.
And a first star came to us from far away: the distant
and fanciful sun of happiness. The gentle fire
that dreamed of forms and bodies
in a ceremony of zenithal golds
making us feel, grow, know each other
to delirium. Wells of holy water and
life’s caress:

this memory
is still a spring.