After Many Years

Time's arrow rests easily in the sun's drawn bow.
As soon as the agave blossoms from the cliffs,
your heart will sway above in the wind that blows
each hour's lenght trough its every tick.

Already a shadow drifts above the Azores
and over your breast's own quaking garnet.
Death is also the moment's conspirator,
and you, towards whom it streaks, the target.

The sea is also spoiled and vain, a mere
shift of its mirror swallowing a handfull of blood,
just as the agave blooms after many years
in the shelter of cliffs, before the druken flood.

Ingeborg Bachmann, Darkness Spoken: The Collected Poems, Peter Filkins (trad.), Charles Simic (intr.), Zephyr Press, 2006.