Coral Bracho: Water of Jellyfish

Water of jellyfish,
milky, snaking water
of ever-changing shapes; glossy water-flesh; melting
into its lovely surroundings. Water – sumptuous waters
receding, languid

and layered into calm. Water,
water silken, dusky, dense as lead – mercurial;
floating free, idling. The seaweed in there, sparkling, in pleasure's  very breast. The seaweed, crests a-bubbling;

– above the over-arching silence, above the long spits
of basalt rock; the water-weed, its familiar caresses,
its gentle flux. Water of light, of fish; the breeze, the
agate spilling its light. The shy elk flicker like flame –

through the cotton-silk trees, through the shoals
of little fisha flame is pulsing,
water slinking, lynx-like; water of bream (jasper's
sudden reds and browns). Such glory here,
among the jellyfish medusas.
– Parted lips of coastline, the breeze's gentle
movements, lulling softly, settling into crystals, amphibious,
lubricious – water, silken and
magnetic; poised. Water, coasting – lascivious radiance

wading, oily,
over crumbling basalt. Light crawls, opal,
through its own inner flames. – Water
of jellyfish.
Sweet fresh-water shine;
water leaving no traces; dense,
mercurial
white as steel, parting round the granite stacks, its flashes of minnows; secretive, smooth. – Water alive,

and rolling; a bronze sun vaulting in close;
– liquid minerals, spurting. Water of jellyfish, a water to
feel dissolving into itself
into a slick of indigo, quivering honeycombs. Long
strands of water, sea-lettuce, the catfish nibbling
in its rich, streaming bed, whose light nectars
form a golden pond, liminal. Weightless water,
air inside amber,
– a chrism of light, full of grace; the high tide a tiger,
below a wash of shadow. Water at the edge, water-eel,
swallowing itself,
its great journey by night –
along these matrices of silk, through the
sea-sage. – Water

rich with cod. Heavy water (that calm pleasure,
warm; the way it shimmers) –
Water's edge –

its smooth changes, its delight in itself,
its own seductive rise and fall. Water,
silken, receding, layered
into languid calm. Water, water; its gentle stroke
– water of the otter, the fish. Water

of jellyfish,
milky, snaking; water,

Tr. Tom Boll and Katherine Pierpoint. From El ser que va a morir (The Being that is Going to Die, 1981). The animal is the water itself, sensuous and eternally restless. The poem's original title means “water of slippery borders”. The comma at the end of the final line is intended.