Ashes

I cross a desert
and its secret nameless desolation.
The heart
suffers the stone’s dryness
and the nightly crackling
of its matter or its void.

There is a remote light, though,
and I know I am not alone;
although, despite all, all of this, there is
not a single thought
capable against death,
I am not alone.

Eventually I touch this hand which shares my life,
and I stand on it,
and I feel with it everything I love
which I raise up to the sky,
and although it’s ashes, I proclaim it: ashes.

Although everything I have had so far it is ashes,
everything I have been offered as hope.

José Ángel Valente