Silvia Guerra

First Weave

Translated from the Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval and Jeannine Pitas

Early the restraint
of work in the fog
condenses the other nameless
part that marks
the days, the efforts to
reach the waterline.
Mercy prospers
tying bundles
tight at the bottom
with the thin end
of the thread.
Without solace
grinding makes gold
into mortar of lava.
All the garlands
braided in their places
the bushes the open
corollas that crush
petal with pistils, pistils
with pistils. And the deals
are just that, or they’re there,
a fruit pointing to the
taxonomy of the instant
and the eye fascinated with
what passes from consecutive
to immediate between the strip
that covers us: the slippery
eel of the tropes
the move over mules
transfers the figure from there
to something more that time opens
one from uncertain origin appears
one whose flight endures everything
those brilliant Branches and noise
of mountain Trembling.