They speak of a stillness in the desert,
but that talk is movement,
air shimmering and iris contracting.
It is nowhere near the silent peaks when –

Hush, the baby sleeps!

The motionless ice in eternal expanse,
Unsullied and unobserved.
This serene mountain is an avalanche
When set by the peace, unreached, in which –

Hush, the baby sleeps!

The furthest point from the dimmest star
Is this where sleeping babies are?

At last then, silenced, in dense pines.
In a forested bed that absorbs all sound.
At last, reverberate, stillness.

But a twig cracks, a military jet attacks!

Fear smacks the blackened concrete:
What if, in a future war?
Oh Child! What if –

Without motion –
Are you dead?

While I was enchanted, what if I was bereft?
Without movement.
Have you, without transport,
gone on ahead?

Without me it seems,
I catch my breath.
And this hand of mine has a finger also
Which roused
caresses the tip of your sleeping nose
which twitches.

Ma vida! My life!

Little baby.
Of this stolen worship,
I am observant.

At one and two in the afternoon,
I observed the Moses basket.

Which is why I haven’t cleaned the kitchen.