I'm a greet-you-and-meet-you professional
I get straight to the point and don't mess around.
I'll ask you how your day is,
If you found everything okay-
And if you prefer paper or plastic.

Like a superhero from a comic strip-
I'm out to make you smile in five minutes
or less.
I have the super power
To turn you away from your favorite alcoholic beverage
Or turn you on-
It all depends if you can pass the test,
the secret code to a top secret nuke shelter-
No pass, no go.

I'm like a greeting card,
Everyday; a new message.
Sometimes I'll hear about the weather,
Other times,
I'll hear intimate details which I really don't care about-
But I'll pretend I do...
Things like-
What you're having for supper,
How much wine your sister likes to drink
Or the fact that you make the best homemade sauce.

I'll get to know you the more I see you,
And like an app on your smart phone,
I'll remind you to come again.

I'll see your kids at their worst-
Moments their grandparents don't get to see.
I'll learn about your financial status,
Your marital status,
Or the fact that you don't have a status at all.

I'll take all of your complaints
And sometimes pass them someone else-
I'll hear all your requests like an overworked DJ
And if you're lucky...
Your wish will be granted.

I am a food slinger,
A cash ringer,
A handle-your-food winner,
I am grocery store cashier.

The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the dwarves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot's dread, fury of blind driver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed infinite tenderness.
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief my desire was to you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was my voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still brike the currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one!