Cabaleiro 101

IMAGE
London. December Morning, 1993

White-souled winter leopards
moved over the Thames,
as though returning from a lunar sleep.
Lead ran molten through the city’s arteries,
breathing — harsh, animal —
like a young bear choking on silence.

London: cold water beads upon your tongue.
You did not know it then,
yet you were right to keep that vision —
orange scarf, a foxed and crumbling book,
the fierce warmth of a studious heart.

Afterward would come
champagne skulls, bird-lungs,
the slow descent of immense dark feathers.

Years later you would understand
how often that moment returned:
a young student, terribly alone,
dazzlingly happy
within the populous roar.

A destiny condensed —
the tight solitude of a ragged pilgrim.
As if a card-reader had already laid the spread:
bridge, river, exile, book.

Christian — open your eyes.
Give yourself that memory
once, and again, and always.
Let it not perish; let it endure within you
like snow resting on the highest ridge of thought.

An image that drafted your life in a single stroke.
You are that sign:
a solitary figure in the city,
alone among innumerable solitary worlds.


Christian Sanz