Rafael Alberti

 To the Retina

To you, rounded garden, where beauty, like
an open window's view, lies clearly drawn;
curved flower iridescing in the eye
from band's-end blackness to the blond of dawn.

To you, mirror in whom the infinity
of Nature's images is held like treasure:
occluded sun, night of sublimity;
open moon, sunlit hour without measure.

To you, animated even during sleep,
chivalric in the oath to life you keep,
mullioned window on the sea of fortune.

Without you, what would be the color's plight,
painter of the painters, child of light?
To you, always Painting's source & origin.


From To Painting: Poems by Rafael Alberti, trans. by Carolyn Tipton