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I bring you a little bit of seaweed tangled with sea spray and this comb
But your braids are better tied than the clouds with the wind
with the crimson sky and those with the quiverings of life
and the sobs that twisting sometimes between my hands die with
the waves and the reefs along the shore in such numbers that
for a long while we'll despair of perfumes and their flight
at evening when this comb without moving points to the stars
buried in their rapid silky flow crossed by my fingers
forever searching their roots for the damp caress of a sea
more dangerous than the one this seaweed was gathered from
with the froth scattered by a storm
A dying star is like your lips
They turn blue like wine spilled on a tablecloth
An instant passes with the depth of a mine
The hard coal with muffled grumbling falls in flakes on the town
How cold it is in the dead-end street where I knew you
A forgotten number on a run-down house
Number 4 I think
I'll find you again before a few days are up near that pot of China asters
The mines snore hollowly
The roofs are covered with coal dust
This comb in your hair like the end of the world
The smoke the old bird and the jay
There roses and emeralds are finished
The precious stones and the flowers
The earth crumbles and goes star-shaped with the sound of an iron on mother of pearl
But your hair so well-braided is shaped like a hand.

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