CARLOS ARREDONDO
THE GRANTON LIGHTHOUSE
***********************
From this point,
arching upwards, the machinery of light wrote out its final chapter
In a marvellous, maritime evening, filled with sun.
From this horizon, artificial and visible, where I now stand
it urgently opened pathways for those voyagers who understood,
yes, really understood the sea.
Here,
as I sit now beneath the cupola,
everything mellows, and yet I'm much afraid
that no-one,
inside or out,
would wish to die of grief in this magnificent
and tranquil architecture.
From my lofty, solitary quay
a residence of public spiders and dramatic memories
surrenders to the sun which quietly dies behind
the suburbs of the sea.
Beginning with this stirring of the heart,
this construct of steel and glass and brick.
I, an impromptu thief, unblushingly rob
this ancient lighthouse, firmly founded
in smug cement,
of its own time and history.
All is diamond,
all is gold.
All is salt
and all reality,
inside and outside this ancestral light.
Here within, to my surprise, there is no sadness.
Out there in the lonely, luminous street,
chattering machinery, the noise of insects, aircraft engines
and gulls who fly surveillance missions
over the patrimony of the sea,
it recounts to me
the story its final cut to blackness.
The Granton Lighthouse was the harvest
of some dreamer who imagined
that ships without direction might be saved
by just a single, penetrating ray.
Translated by John Gillies
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