Festival of the Moon

To one who dreamed long kisses with no lips
The wind brought only lips without desires
The adolescent left his tree at night
And slipped into the world to find a virgin
A little snow to offer his first sigh.

Tired of being a tree he was a wall
Against his neck there breathed a stronger wind
Whoever lent an ear to its long hollows
Heard in a thousand bursts of gunfire dawn
Dead children stood erect in the bright sun.

His arms full of names that were like lace
The treasure was his to carry all alone
And every time a new and lovelier rose
Was born to the day he fled into her body
To name her and to lie within her sleep.

He went away to find the lands where white
Sobs of demonic rivers overflow
His mouth was open to the cosmic snows
He held the image that he loved so tight
His body by itself cast into two shadows.

The night of the sea pressed his open eyes
The dead man glided down the slopes of day
The dead man drank from the ocean's lips
And lived again because he had known love
In a country where the flags are at half-mast always.

To live it was enough that he be named
One could sleep better dreaming of his arms
And he sliding into the human night
Brought sleeping men the dawn and showed the way
Into the splendor of the world's light.