A Pious Woman by Gabriela Mistral

"He knows all about the night that's now my bed and my road."

A Pious Woman
by Gabriela Mistral
translated by Randall Couch

I want to see the man of the lighthouse,
I want to go to the rocky point,
taste the wave in his mouth,
see the abyss in his eyes.
I want to reach him, if he's living,
old man of salt and brine.

They say he looks only eastward
—walled up while still alive—
I want to cut him off from his waves
so in place of the abyss he'll see me.

He knows all about the night
that's now my bed and my road:
knows undertows, octopus, sponges,
knows a cry that ends all knowing. 

His faithful, battered chest
is spat on by the tides,
he's whistled at by gulls
and white as any wound,
and so still, so mute and absent,
he seems as yet unborn. 

But I go to the lighthouse tower,
climbing the knife-edged track,
for the man who's going to tell me
the earthly and the divine. 
One in each arm, I bring him
a jug of milk, a sip of wine...

And he keeps listening to seas
that love nothing but themselves.
But maybe now he listens to nothing,
stalled in forgetfulness and salt. 

First published in Madwomen by Gabriela Mistral, translated by Randall Couch.