José Ángel Valente: “Latitude”

Latitude

I only want to be lying on your body
like a lizard in the sun
in these days of sadness.

The broken cry dissolves in the air,
this base of statues
gathers ivy,
your hand searches for me
along the skin of your stomach
where I sleep outstretched.

These lonely thoughts
flow, embodied, to your shore,
trembling beneath eyelids,
trickling through veins,
in the night-span of a heartbeat,
on the bright latitude of your belly,
to flood your flanks,
the banks of your body,
like an animal seeking
its primal source.

José Ángel Valente

Translated from Spanish by Paul Weinfield, © 2015