Can You
For Lumir Civrny, in Prague
Can you sell me the
air that passes through your fingers
and hits your face and
undoes your hair?
Maybe you could sell
me five dollars’ worth of wind,
or more, perhaps sell
me a cyclone?
Maybe you would sell
me
the thin air, the air
(not all of it) that
sweeps
into your garden
blossom on blossom
into your garden for
the birds,
ten dollars of pure
air.
The air it turns and passes
with butterfly-like spins.
No one owns it,no one.
Can you sell me some
sky,
the sky that’s blue at
times,
or gray again at
times,
a small part of your
sky,
the one you bought –
you think –with all the trees
of your orchard, as
one who buys the ceiling with the house?
Can you sell me a
dollar’s worth
of sky, two miles
of sky, a fragment of
your sky,
whatever piece you
can?
The sky is in the clouds.
The clouds are high, they pass.
No one owns them, no one.
Can you sell me some
rain, the water
that has given you
your tears and wets your tongue?
Can you sell me a
dollar’s worth of water
from the spring, a
pregnant cloud,
as soft and graceful
as a lamb,
or even water fallen
on the mountain,
or water gathered in
the ponds
abandoned to the dogs,
or one league of the
sea, a lake perhaps,
a hundred dollars’
worth of lake?
The water falls, it runs.
The water runs, it passes.
No one holds it, no one.
Can you sell me some
land, the deep night
of the roots, the
teeth of
dinosaurs and the
scattered lime
of distant skeletons?
Can you sell me long
since buried jungles,
birds now extinct,
fish fossilized, the
sulphur
of volcanoes, a
thousand million years
rising in spiral? Can
you
sell me some land, can
you
sell me some land, can
you?
The land that’s yours is mine.
The feet of all walk on it.
No one owns it, no one.
Nicolas Guillen
