There was a granite stud
Near the pier
A low table weakened
By the gusts and the salt.

The sun was lightening
The edges of the waves
A few sprays
Wet my white lashes

I searched the horizon
The flash of my youth
The liquid flesh of my wife
Her white gold wrists

My cap fell to the ground,
I thought I saw the silhouette
Of a God in the storm
On the table, near the granite block,

A glass chess set
Flickered
Like a broken neon sign
I was quick,

As the storm roared,
I moved each pawn
Like languid beliefs,
Carefully

My serene opponent
Burned the horizon
With his thermogenic eyes,
I had the vision

Of a sudden indentation
Tearing the pearly sky
And I hummed the song she loved
While playing chess with Providence

I’m just a poor fellow
A patriarch haunted by his infirmities
I’ve been working all these years
In a boredom-laden slum

I was a locksmith in a town
Unimportant and often,
I prayed to God to give me back
The one I loved, that he would

To resurrect my widowed heart,
But every morning laughed in my face
I found nothing new,
That the next day

I clutched only bitterness and cold
Against my scrupulous chest
The beautiful ones slammed the door of my store
By throwing banalities in my face

In my face, and I dreamed
One day to defy the stars
To see my wife’s smile again
The caress of her dirty clothes

But every cloud bursts with laughter
A black gull takes bets,
I am drunk with iodine and rage,
Do you hear the foam ignite?

With his windy arms God spurs
The king towards the nearest square
I swallow a mucus, wrinkle my misty forehead:
The game is far from being won

Above our fight
A goddess troubles the incarnate sky
She dances at the sight of the shining pieces,
Laughs and elbows me,

Her eyes pierce the wall of my consciousness,
Her tongue licks the bottom of my ears,
I hear a whisper in the cold
Her tongue seems to have frozen with joy

She has Angelina’s eyes,
The same heavy lashes, the same voice,
Ah, if my wife could see us,
The Goddess, the chess set and me.

I played with her all night,
On the table by the pier,
Soaked in this drunken clarity,
Defying an eternal opponent

Tying up all the momentum of life in me,
Against impatient Okeanos I brandished
Every flicker of humanity
To stay in the game

I did not lower my eyes until the morning
Checkmate to the Eternal
My cap flew off
The foam caught up with it – or was it Her?

My eyes struck by the light
Slipped from their earthly orbit,
I slumped to the ground
Like a sandblasted mountain

Already the sun is up
Men and women are murmuring,
A little girl lowers my eyelids,
But behind the crowd I see my wife – resurrected