You Light Up My Life

Aristotle says: a beautiful body

should be observed in its totality.

That’s how I saw you arrive this morning.

You came in from riding your bike, an hour

along the river bank. You showered.

We swam together. Several

lengths in the pool’s transparence.

We made love afterwards, in love

with being different and being the same.

In the afternoon you studied or wrote.

I saw you for a few moments. But now

that you sleep beside me breathing

naked in the June heat, in the dark,

I think the philosopher doesn’t only

refer to the epiphany in space,

to the lone blow of matter,

but also to the body made of time, 

to the simple sum of moments

that will stay forever in the general

register of this world’s days.

Aristotle says: a beautiful body

should be observed in its totality.

 Translated by Curtis Bauer
“You Light Up My Life” was published in Eros Is More (Alice James Books, 2014).

You can read and listen the poem in the original Spanish here.