VILLAESPESA, Francisco


Dream of the Caiman

Enormous log dragged by the wave—

caiman beached on the river shore:

backbone a broken cordillera,

formidable tail, jaws an abyss.

The sun wraps him in a dazzling aureole—

a seeming mail-coat and heraldry,

a metal monster who shimmers

and whose shimmering lays a sheen.

Unmoving as a sacred idol

girt in a mesh of compact steel,

he lies against the still, dark water

like an enchanted prince

who lives an eternal prisoner

of the river’s palace of glass.