TAO OF THE BELOVED WOMAN
Carlos Barbarito
trans. Brian Cole
°***°
1
Female; mystery and door.
2
Wasps and snakes don't bite her,
wild beasts don't unsheathe their claws at her,
birds of prey don't snatch her.
3
Soft bones, flexible muscles,
mystery on mystery,
doors to wonders.
4
Whose daughter is she?
She seems older than Heaven and Earth.
5
Without leaving her door
she knows what the world is.
Without looking out of her window
she sees the ways to heaven.
Before knowing me she already knew me.
She had not seen me and yet she called my name.
6
She said:
If you cling to me you will cling to life,
you will travel and you will not meet
the rhinoceros or the tiger;
you will go without arms and without a shield
into the midst of the combantants.
The rhinoceros will have nowhere to put
its horn,
nor the tiger its claws, nor the blade its edge.
Death will find no place.
7
After that, dark and light,
now forms without a form, figures without a
figure,
nobody that could see us,
in front, our heads,
behind, our backs.
...
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