BEES

 

When I was a child a dense swarm of bees

Poured into my mouth pure forest honey.

So it happened with Isidore of Seville

when he was just a nipper, legend says.

Everyone expected of me the eloquence 

Of a saint in Damask, a rethorician in Athens.

But nobody, not even my mother knew 

About those bees having already sipped 

into the white asphodels down in Hades  ,

into the delusive oleanders in Arcadia.

Nobody expected of me to be a poet,

a secret polisher of words, the amanuensis 

of the invisible...

I still can listen their humming on my lips.

(2006)