Canto XXXV

I sat in the middle of the woods to breathe.
I breathed the fires of light along the sea’s shore.
The world slowly breathes with my breathing.
In the night I breathe the night of the night.
My lips breathe with the air of love on their lips.
My mouth shut with the closed mouth of secrets,
I breathe with the sap of sawn-down trees,
and like a rock I am breathing silence,
and like the black roots I breathe the blueness
high up in the rustling branches of greenery.
I sat to feel coursing through the shadowy
culvert of my veins all the light of the world.
And I was a great sun of light that was breathing.
My lungs held in my chest the firmament
that inhales the light to exhale the shade,
that heralds the day and disperses the night,
that inhales life to exhale death.
Inhaling, exhaling, breathing: the fusion
of opposites, the circle of perfect consciousness.
Inebriated by feeling invaded by something
without color or substance and seeing myself overcome
in the visible world by an invisible essence.
I sat in the middle of the woods to breathe.
I sat in the center of the world to breathe.
I slept dreamlessly, dreaming more deeply,
and when I awoke, my lips slowly whispered
in the fragrant light: "Those who know what it is
keep quiet and those who speak have never known it."