by Luz Pozo Garza (Ribadeo, Lugo)
Translated by John Rutherford

The air was like some white camellia
that had turned into rain in shadow in pure absence.
Dark shadows.
Primordial columns wiht Romanesque volume.
But you weren’t there…

I looked at the evening.
A spiral of the rain in my memory.
A station of incense, weeping, myrrh,
from the depths. Willows sheets of music.
The fountains are all alone.
A spice: the whiff of anointed camellias.
It rains grey Compostela. A chalice of rain.
But you weren’t there…

Our story belongs to the crypt of the dusks
on the Way to Santiago.
A long crown of domes
frozen
making the miracle on the bridges of Rome.
Our story will be read beneath the pure lamp
in the night of the grand houses open like a codex.
In the night, face down
on silken cloths closed cathedrals
altars of parpen.
In a dolmen sensed near Compostela.
I kissed the evening on the altars.
But you weren’t there…

In search of time
I tore the music-sheets from the Codex Calixtinus
in the Pórtico da Gloria.
A chasuble, blue from weeping and absence,
collapsed soundlessly.
Deprived of the words that level chalices
I stood against the light.
The flagstones wrote the obstinate landscape.
Then night came. It was raining in Compostela.
But you weren’t there…