To my sister in another continent
I can easily imagine the universe
at the precise point prior to the Big Bang
when neither poets nor poems existed,
and the tongue silent and immobile
inside the mouth could not utter a single word,
or when the Cherokees’ mythic stories waited
for their shamans to chant them.
In those days lovers did not sigh
sweet nothings in their beloved ears,
angels did not flap their wings frantically
to avoid sliding to earth head down.
Plato had not yet thought out loud
how to present his teacher’s doctrine,
a condemned man after all, to the Academy.
Newborns did not premiere their lungs crying
and in the afternoons, the Albufera’s ducks
of iridescent feathers, didn’t snatch flying insects.
The universe had not initiated its yugas,*
and the volume of the Vedic OM registered zero.
Water did not descend clamoring in the Iguazú
Falls with powerful super-green splashings
and Shakespeare didn’t sit at a wobbling desk
of splintered oak mending, like the cobbler
of Vila Barberá, old European legends
for first performances in the London’s Globe.
Not even Cervantes could imagine
the adventures of the Cautivo de Urgel returned
famished and battered to the beaches of Denia.
And you, through this non-existing ocean
separating us, would not have been able to hear
my voice whispering loudly, how much I love you.
*Cyclic ages of evolution in Hindu Cosmology.
