Born today

You don’t know the rain or the trees,

but you are already a forest.

Today as the world begins for you,

while your eyes are filled with the sea,

while everyone welcomes you as in a station,

where one is always waiting,

while all is nascence and wonder,

maps that give no assurance as to a place to go.

Today as the world begins,

sadness unperceived,

you are pure time,

the fragrance of wood and silence,

questions without shadows

and the humble love of one who has lost everything.

I’m certain of this much,

the waves, the ocean,

your bird-like laughter.

You have brought forth the whisper of a memory,

your little feet, as little

is the trace of snow that you have left behind

in those January moments.

What will your life be like when it grows in your hands

with the fragility of good news,

like a fish that slips away to return to the river.

On any afternoon,

with the same surprise as a loved one,

you will feel the breeze that has touched the trees

with its ancient weariness.

There are times when it is rough and burns like a match

when it lights up a memory. . .

Your hands shine,

there are no shadows or knives,

I can see the comets

streaking through the night

like a boat that sets sail and enters into the fog.

Life is a house where a stranger lives,

a garden from the past you won’t return to,

a shore that you search for while fearing its ghosts.

But life is also

a light behind a window

when darkness

occupies every niche and every continent.

This night is dark,

the train searches for arms

that are on the other side of time.

Meanwhile, I think of a way to tell you

that dreams are part of us

like a pier is a voyage.

Because you are already a forest,

and there are dolphins and lakes and mountains,

and impossible loves

that will be called Celia.

Someone will say your name in the future

and an empty house will fill with people,

everyone will sit down at the table.

You have probably forgotten,

it was happiness that planted this sorrow,

it was happiness the same as a storm

above an empty glass.

When fear and despair show up at your door,

and all the cherries have fallen into the mud,

and seagulls cry out over

the intolerable abandonment of an injured woman

who feels that to advance is to be more alone . . .

If all this happens

remember the manner in which rain

turns into a tree

and the way that waves

are the water’s end and the sea’s beginning.

You don’t know the sea, or the mud or the trees,

but you are already a forest that a river runs through.

We found out afterwards,

no time for anything.

Because maybe life gave us everything in the beginning

and we keep on seeking

a road that leads there

a handful of dust

with sufficient balance

not to turn into

air or a mountain.

Because maybe life did not belong to us

and it went about consuming itself

like all the things we thought were ours

and they are part of the harm

that draws the lines of history

razing cities with their walls.

And had we known

we would have folded our hands

or looked the other way.

And had we known

we would have bitten our lips

bleeding through love

to make our wounds visible,

or we would have prayed,

or given up everything to remain still

and not to cross the  days of agony.

It’s all so huge it won’t fit into weeping

and grief observes us from without.

We found out afterwards,

there’s no nostalgia greater than hope for the future.