Soft Enchantment

Macedonio Fernández

Fathomless and full
as two brief, graceful immensities,
your eyes inhabit your countenance
like lords;
and when from their depths
I see dallying and rising
the flame of a radiant soul,
it seems that the morning is rising from sleep,
shining, over there between sea and sky,
where that drowsy line rocks
between two blue empires,
the line where our hearts pause
to caress it with their hopes,
to kiss it with their glance;
when our being meditates,
drying its tears,
and, silently,
throws itself open to all the breezes of Life;
when we glimpse
the ashes of days gone by
floating in the Past
like the dust of all our pilgrimages
left behind at the last turn of the road:
Eyes that open like mornings
and, closing, let evening fall.

SOURCE: Fernández, Macedonio. “Soft Enchantment,” translated by Paula Speck, in Macedonio: Selected Writings in Translation, edited by Jo Anne Engelbert (Fort Worth, TX: Latitudes Press, 1984), p. 98.

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CONTACT Ralph Dumain

Uploaded 22 December 2019