ENGLISH read as addressed to an unborn child, as if Mary was reciting it to Jesus; but it could also be read as if written to a lover.
‘The Annunciation’ translated by David Eduardo Torres Alvarez
I Because from the beginning you were destined to me. Before the ages of the wheat and the lark and even before the fish. When God had no more than horizons of unlimited blue, and the universe was an unpronounced will. When everything lay on the divine lap, intermingled and confused, you and I we laid whole, together. But then came the punishment of clay. He took me between his fingers, tearing me from the absolute plenitude of old. He moulded my hips and my shoulders, He lit me up with restless vigils, and denied me oblivion. I knew you were sleeping among the things and I breathed the air to see if I could find you and I drank from the fountains as if to drink you. Orphan of your sweet weight upon my chest, without a name until your descent I languished, sad, in exile. I was like an empty pitcher nostalgic of copious wines and of sonorous and ineffable waters. I seemed to be like a mute zither. I could not even die like the one who falls loosening the muscles in an abrupt renunciation. I was flogged by the ferocious certitude of your absence, ahead, finding your trace or your signs. I could not die because I waited. 13