The Conquest

You were not looking for God’s unspeakable name on my body,
the skillful stroke of his ideogram on my face.
It was not my blood the spelling charm,
nor the ability for creation of my word what you were looking for.

For you I was only the ship
that soon you’d give to the fire.

You were only looking for
scented cardamom and ginger routes,
silky mulberry paths,
green tea-leaves and aji treasures;
and to hoist yourself proud
not fearing the fall from Earth’s precipice,
like a child who believes that the world burns out
when he closes his eyes.

You needed my tongue:
divine breath that on the first day
they blew in my mouth,
to open the scroll of secret routes
that ancient shamans hid
in each one of the thousand maids.

It was necessary to learn my speech,
but you only learned suckling from my breast.
Only under my sheets during the torrid nights
your sweaty fingers learned to decode hieroglyphs.

And you were suckered into believing
that only your mighty pen
would awaken this savage glossary.

You believed that only your ardent kiss
would ignite the gunpowder
that I,
silly me,
used to mix with water to make ink.

That only your hands would know how to open the book.

And that only in your land they give a man spade and quill
and they command him,
as Adam before,
to name all the new things,
that only two steps ahead are created
for his selfish wonder.

But they didn’t tell you that silent volcanoes don’t sleep,
they remain boiling,
always on the lookout.