Song of the Sleepless

It is still night and the cock crows.
And so he does night after night.
And each night I wait for his crowing.
Baleful is the shriek of the cock.
Acrid is the light as the cock cracks the night.
I grope into the dark and listen to the cock.
“You have lost another night,” says the rooster.
Until there will be neither cock nor night.”

***

The Autumn of Roses

Already, you live in the season of the time left behind:
You named it the autumn of roses.
Inhale and be enticed by it. And listen,
when the sky fades, to the silence of the world.

Francisco Brines, Oliva, Spain 1932,

Translation Germain Droogenbroodt – Stanley Barkan

From: “El ruido del mundo (The Noise of the World”
POINT Editions 1998