| Poets draw nature before it prefigures itself and they invent
 and   build a hut abandoned by a gang of thugs.
 
        They sing sometimes and they form a road so water can take the shape   of a river.
 They instill in mud the memory of the trees.
 A bird   discovers its colors in the phrases of a poem,
 and picks its rare name.
 When poets leave sleep behind the young thugs begin their rampage.
 They romp a little
 and they throng as if nature is ambushing them.
 They storm and they thunder.
 And their limbs begin to thin as if the   seasons
 were all about to start,
 as if childhood selected its shapes   suddenly,
 and eyes
 gaze only at the perseverance of nature.
 And the young thugs commit their sins sip by sip
 the way poems clash   against the triumph of time.
 Creatures offer gifts
 and take their   tempting shapes
 as if a tongue made creation.
 And people, still startled   by their inception,
 face the thin ice adorning their mirrors to see
 what   the poets have done to our feeble dreams.
 Poetry maligns speech and the young thugs commit forgivable sins
 the   way an infant scratches a breast then weeps to
 it the way a text breaks its   intentions.
 Then the apple of love descends
 enamoring a woman with a lost   lover,
 the way the wolf divulges the myth of the bloody shirt
 and the   innocent brothers confess their crime
 and nature forgives a careless creator   then praises him.
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