Tiempo Del Hombre (poema)

The cosmic particle that sails in my blood
Is an infinite world of sidereal forces.
It came to me after a long journey of millennia
When, perhaps, I was sand for the feet of the air.

Then I was the wood. Desperate root.
Sunken in the silence of a waterless desert.
Then I was a snail, who knows where.
And the seas gave me their first word.

Then the human form unfolded over the world
The universal flag of muscle and tear.
And blasphemy grew on the old earth.
And saffron, and linden, the song and the prayer.

Then I came to America to be born as a man.
And in me I gathered the pampas, the jungle, and the mountains.
If a plainsman grandfather galloped to my cradle,
Another told me stories on his cane flute.

I do not study things nor pretend to understand them.
I recognize them, it's true, because I lived in them before.
I converse with the leaves in the middle of the mountains
And the secret roots give me their messages.

And so I go through the world, without age or destiny.
Under the protection of a cosmos that walks with me.
I love the light, and the river, and the silence, and the star.
And I flourish in guitars because I was the wood.