Weaving the Morning

Weaving the Morning
by João Cabral de Melo Neto

1.

One rooster does not weave a morning,
he will always need the other roosters,
one to pick up his shout
and toss it to another, another rooster
to pick up the shout of the rooster before him
and toss it to another, and other roosters
with many other roosters to criss-cross
the sun-threads of their rooster-shouts
so that the morning, starting from a frail cobweb,
may go on being woven, among all the roosters.

2.

And growing larger, becoming a cloth,
pitching itself a tent where they all may enter,
inter-unfurling itself for them all, in the tent
(the morning) which soars free of ties and ropes –
the morning, tent of a weave so light
that, woven, it lifts itself through itself: balloon light.

~~~~~~~~~

Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry, edited by Stephen Tapscott

Education by Stone: Selected Poems by João Cabral de Melo Neto

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