Firefly Under the Tongue

 - Coral Bracho
                     Translated By Forrest Gander 

 

I love you from the sharp tang of the fermentation;   

in the blissful pulp. Newborn insects, blue.   

In the unsullied juice, glazed and ductile.   

Cry that distills the light:   

through the fissures in fruit trees;   

under mossy water clinging to the shadows. The   

            papillae, the grottos.   

In herbaceous dyes, instilled. From the flustered touch.   

            Luster   

oozing, bittersweet: of feracious pleasures,   

of play splayed in pulses.

                                    Hinge   

(Wrapped in the night's aura, in violaceous clamor,   

refined, the boy, with the softened root of his tongue   

expectant, touches,   

with that smooth, unsustainable, lubricity—sensitive lily   

folding into the rocks   

if it senses the stigma, the ardor of light—the substance, the arris

fine and vibrant—in its ecstatic petal, distended—[jewel   

pulsing half-open; teats], the acid   

juice bland [ice], the salt marsh,   

the delicate sap [Kabbalah], the nectar   

             of the firefly.)

from: Poetry, Copyright 2007.