If love is not the sum of my every day,
continuous world that will bear no
caprice of return to an origin, nothing
above ever-reaching Being; if each
aurora longs for its own scarlet seed,
for what ungovernable chance does spring
rouse itself, fatally safe and secure
in its power to impose its light tomorrow?
Suddenly, underfoot, a desert
crackles in a flower’s spiky
petals. Waste void dryness, distance.
Meanwhile, through its fixed course, with no
gesture of return, as before,
a river giving its self to the sea.
Jorgé Guillen (1893–1984) was a Spanish poet whose life work was a three-part book of poems, _Nuestro Aire. _He was associated with the “Group of 27” poets with Federico Garcia Lorca. After leaving Spain in 1936, he taught in the United States at both Harvard and Wellesley Colleges.