THE RIVERS

Here is the serpents’ cage.

Coiled up on themselves,

the rivers, the sacred rivers, sleep.

The Mississippi with its Blacks,

the Amazon with its Indians.

They are like the powerful springs

of gigantic trailer trucks.

Laughing, children toss them

little green living islands,

parrot-painted jungles,

manned canoes,

and other rivers.

The great rivers wake up,

uncoil themselves slowly,

gobble down everything, swell, almost bursting,

and then go back to sleep.

Translated from the Spanish