The Heavenly Jerusalem

On a Sunday the white butterfly skims across my meadow: dandelion-
      filled meadow of my imagining. To the right

is the lake that calls to me, but I refuse it; I shall live: grow fat, laugh, turn
     rubicund,

Hals, as any plump-cheeked burgomeister. To the left: traffic. The
     automotive unreality of cities and I,

I turn and see soft down: how happy we were when we found that Sunday
     of dandelions and you cooked outdoors

an enormous ham shaped like a spindle, garnished it

with cloves and corn

and beautiful potatoes; our daughters played jump rope: there were two,

those heavenly butterflies, and if they had been three they could be four,
     braids and curly tresses arranged in blue

and yellow

in all the flowery growth of my meadows: at jump rope of our daughters
     climbed high up

all the way to our first great gathering which was in the heavens, my love: I
     grabbed you by the waist and was moved

to climb

with you on to the tree with four old trunks, but there was no way to do it:
     how nice, we failed. You laughed from the waist

down and I let myself be carried across your wide Japanese bridges, your
     old Spanish masonry bridge, an ant

bit us: we smiled; the swelling, and the distant chime of music terrified us

as if the girls had walked across the surface of the lake and back again

and the spangled destroyer of the city

grumbled.


--Jose Kozer
translated by Mark Weiss