Madrugada: The Ashes

These ashes greet you, madrugada.
As you mold dark against shadows
you mock the morning-song of this poem
you trap a fire burning blind in detours of blood

Again you raise a body on sand, madrugada,
cursed in a word, revived in a web
and rough shadow of black desire
bristling hair, the bitch of this page

Intertwined lines catch the fly of delight
already ruined, tenacious, fibrous,
an agony under leaves uncovers
the menstrual eye sadistic in destiny.
A dream grows, hardens -
a sexual rumble of echoes compounded

And the knock at the door
                        - hinges, pleasures in rust
the far off squeaking, the groaning from another world

At last, madrugada, doubt traces a face
exposed in this mirror held against the sun:

                         Its spelling
                          reduced to ashes
                            calcinated




                     (Max Martins, 1952)


Translation by James Bogan, in "Latin American Literary Review",
January/June, 1985 - University of Pittsburg

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