Limonero Moon

I had a sour thought, as if I bit
into a lemon, and the bitter mist
settled on my naked eye like dew
or vinaigrette: the red eye wept
and suppurated, pitying itself.
I was a thought ungrateful, a thought sharp
and zestless, pithy: what had given me
the pip? The cloudy juice ran down my cheek.

As in your lemon-grove, with its wax fruit,
its oilcloth leaves unswaying in the wind,
unwhispering, unwelcoming to birds,
the still Alhambran tank between two rows.
It only grows and buds beneath the moon.
The torrid moon distils its pungency.

Terence Dooley’s selected poems, Tocoloro, are about to come out in a bilingual English/Spanish edition from Los Papeles de Brighton, and will be available through Amazon. His latest translations, Affordable Angst by Mercedes Cebrian and The Enchanted Isles by Daniel Samoilovich, are published by Shearsman Books.