Sino sangriento

From blood to blood I come

like the sea from wave to wave,

poppy-coloured is my soul,

luckless poppy is my destiny,

and I move from poppy to poppy 

to be pierced on the horns of my fate.

There was a creature that came

from a field sown with nothingness,

and there was more than one that came,

under the sign of an angry star

and an evil, turbulent moon.

A bloodied foot painted by

an artist’s brush fell on my life,

there fell a jealous planet of saffron,

there fell an enraged red cloud,

there fell a badly wounded sea, there fell a sky.

I came with the pain of a knifing,

a knife was awaiting my arrival,

I was suckled on bitter milk,

the mad, murderous juice of a sword,

and for the first time I opened my eyes to the sun,

and what I saw first was a wound

and it was awful.

I have been followed by blood, that ravenous beast,

since I was brought into the world,

and even before I was uttered forth,

pushed out by my mother

into this covetous land,

which pulls me by my feet and my side,

ever more strongly, towards the grave.

I fight against blood, I argue

against all those scratching claws and all those veins,

and each body that I stumble upon and speak with

is another bubble of blood, another chain.

Although they are slight, the sharp tips of the oats

add to the marks on my breast:

it was stricken by a love for labouring the land,

and my fallow soul,

hopelessly, incurably wounded,

has furrowed deeply

into the plough’s yearnings for death.

All tools lie in wait for me:

the axe has left its 

secret signs on me;

stones, desires and days

dug streams in my body

which are only swallowed up by sands

and melancholy.

The chains are ever greater,

the snakes are ever greater,

greater and more cruel their power,

greater their encircling rings,

greater their heart, greater mine.

In its bedroom, inhabited by emptiness,

save for the visits,

the pecking and the colour of a crow,

I keep a handful of letters, written passions,

a fistful of blood and a death.

Ay, blood, spreading like lightning,

ay roaring, climbing purple blotches,

a sentence resounding at all hours

under the the suffering anvil of my brow!

Blood gave birth to me and has made me its prisoner,

blood shrinks me and makes me a giant,

I am a building of blood and plaster

which crashes down of its own accord and raises itself up

on a scaffold of bones.

A bricklayer of blood, dead and red,

rains down on me, hangs his shirt up every day

around my eye,

and every night with my soul,

and even with my eyelids, I gather him in.

The blood grows, expands

the reach of its foliage on my breast,

which like an overgrown poplar gets out of control,

breaks up, and falls into many raging rivers.

I see myself suddenly

caught up in their angry currents,

and I swim desperately against them all

as against a fatal torrent of daggers.

I am dragged along by its wild flow,

it shatters me, sinks me, crashes me,

I flail about with my hands, trying to get away,

and my arms leave me and follow after it,

and my yearnings follow with my arms.

I will let myself be broken up and dragged along,

since that is how my life is ordered

by my blood and its tides,

by bodies and by my bloodied star.

I will be a single, lengthy wound,

until, at length, I become

a corpse of spray: wind and nothing.