119 My eyes are copper coins -- I mint them with your face -- To put them in the hand with missing fingers, begging alms, On sobbing with a lumber, trembling subway trains Which try to rush away towards the dark beneath the town. My eyes will pay the debts of crumbling aging walls That stink with bitter tears of time, with spicy sweats of space, That suffer from a sore of silence in the roar To save, inside their cracks, my chapping tenderness of hands. And I will ransom with my graven yellow eyes The ravens fallen in the nights upon the empty streets -- The hostages of longing echoes in hoarse wires, That blindly seek my sleeping lips and ears with wounding beaks.







Previous

IRENE CÆSAR
Confined Verse
Collected Poems

Next