Proem

       At times poetry is the vertigo of bodies and the vertigo of speech and
the vertigo of death;
   the walk with eyes closed along the edge of the cliff, and the verbena
in submarine gardens;
   the laughter that sets on fire the rules and the holy commandments;
   the descent of parachuting words onto the sands of the page;
   the despair that boards a paper boat and crosses,
   for forty nights and forty days, the night-sorrow sea and the day-
sorrow desert;
   the idolatry of the self and the desecration of the self and the dissipa-
tion of the self;
   the beheading of epithets, the burial of mirrors;
   the recollection of pronouns freshly cut in the garden of Epicurus, and
the garden of Netzahualcoyotl;
   the flute solo on the terrace of memory and the dance of flames in the
cave of thought;
   the migrations of millions of verbs, wings and claws, seeds and hands;
   the nouns, bony and full of roots, planted on the waves of language;
   the love unseen and the love unheard and the love unsaid: the love in
love.
Syllables seeds.