RINGS OF ASH
For Cristina Campo
It’s my voices that are singing
so the others can’t sing—
those figures gagged gray in the dawn,
those dressed in the rain like desolate birds.
There is, in this waiting,
a rumor of breaking lilac.
And there is, when the day arrives,
a division of the sun into smaller black suns.
And at night, always,
a tribe of mutilated words
looks for refuge in my throat,
so that they won’t sing—
the ill-fated, the owners of silence.
Alejandra Pizarnik
