Sometimes enthusiasm comes to our door
and sees the sombre ash of our breathing.
Then it does not know whether to enter or to let
us wither away into sleep.
There will be a tomorrow, it seems to think,
a tomorrow of hesitant footsteps
to rouse, and off it goes on tiptoe
so as not to be noticed. It leaves us alone,
bereft of an elemental grace
that we had awaited like summer rain.
But if we were to rise, we would see
the visitor arrive and never enter;
he always leaves floating away, and never sets
his hooves on the ground nor plays his flute —
he may not even know how. As his only trace, he leaves
a scent of sweat and brandy.

It is not for him to visit us,
but for us to find
the path to his lair.

Martina Berrueco, in Anthology of the Discarded, p. 25