Me llamo barro

Mud is my name although I am called Miguel.

Mud is my profession and my destiny,

staining with its tongue all it licks.

I am a sad tool of the road.

I am a tongue, sweetly infamous,

spread out at the feet of the one I idolise.

Like a nocturnal ox, of water and fallow land,

who longs to be the object of idolatry,

I confront your shoes and their surroundings,

and made from carpets and of kisses made

I kiss your heel as it wounds me, and sow it with flowers.

I place relics of my species

at your biting heel, at your step,

and I am always ahead of your step

so that your unfeeling foot can spurn

all the love I raise up towards it.

Wetter than the face of my weeping,

when the glassy sheep bleats from the ice,

when winter closes your window

I come down to your feet like a wide-winged hawk,

with wing stained and heart of earth.

I come down to your feet like a melted branch

of honey, humble, trampled on and alone,

a spurned heart fallen

in the form of seaweed and in the shape of a wave.

As mud in vain I turn myself into a butterfly,

as mud in vain I pour forth my arms,

as mud in vain I bite your heels,

giving you with wounded, flapping wings

toads like convulsing hearts.

As soon as you tread on me, as you place

the image of your footprint upon me,

the bipartite armour which bounds my mouth

in pure, living flesh,

breaks up and disintegrates,

and in pieces it begs you to keep pressing down on it

your mad, free hare’s foot.

Its silent skin bunches up,

the sobs shake their branches

of cerebral wool beneath your step.

And you go by, and it is left

burning its winter candle before the west wind,

a martyr, a jewel, and pasture for the wheel.

It is tired of submitting to the daggers

of rolling cart-wheels and hooves,

and you should fear that the mud will give birth to animals

of corrosive skin and vengeful nails.

Fear that when the moment comes the mud will grow,

fear that it will grow and rise up and cover tenderly,

tenderly and jealously,

your reed-like ankle, my torment,

fear that it will flood your lily-like leg

and grow higher and ascend to your brow.

Fear that it will rise up, blown by the hurricane

from the soft territory of winter

and explode and thunder and deluge,

hard yet tender, upon your blood.

Fear an assault of offended foam

and fear a cataclysm of love.

Before it is consumed by drought

the mud has to get its own back on you.