This poem is divided into sections that use vivid imagery to describe a journey of self-discovery. The speaker addresses an "oceanic daughter" as they search for meaning amidst fragmented symbols and landscapes. Over the course of the poem, the speaker comes to accept uncertainty and change as they shed their old identity and embrace an "unnamed world" that has blossomed within. By the end, the speaker finds they have become a "new world" of their own, emerging transformed from a long period of introspection.

1. Julio Cesar Villegas
Cathedrals
[7/16­7/23]
Boundless, land of shattered symmetry
from which I speak in burning hieroglyphs;
daughter of the forgotten pendulum from whom the hills descend from ­­
the wasps, the lizards, the rain:
In search of my disputed cross, I became a stranger to this world,
a shadow that laughs at its labyrinth;
carve oceans into my throat, upon my limbs decipher my continents,
those silent traitors, and purify me with your
hands of torn papyrus. The hour has
not yet collapsed, cloudless daughter,
find meaning from these roots of dust ­­ the sparrows call.
Within your eyes runs the river of ancient wine,
the waters from where the crows of flame gather to drink,
the day has yet to surrender itself, fatal daughter,
look within the trenches of my battered shadow:
tell to me the stories of cathedrals and rebellions,
of the desert countryside, of the tombs in the sea,
the laughter of my mother, the unobserved monuments…
can you find within these labyrinths a new tale?
Am I a repetition of the original sin?
Am I to bury myself alone, among the forests of the galleon?
No.
Of all my words, oceanic daughter: No.
Let the pillars of ash and tribulation learn to forget me,
let the salamanders of the winter feast upon
the carcass of the broken centuries ­­ do you feel the land tremor?
Give what is left of my harvest to the beggars and the angels;
the unnamed world has bloomed within me,
I walk, as a cautious symbol, upon the awakened vein.
Storms of glass and jade descend upon the valleys,
my body interpreting blindly the language of this earth,
I murmur rituals, autumnal daughter, to remember who I am,
let the kingdom of your eyes instruct me where to walk.

2. The horizon rises from my mouth, and in the distance
a fire rages, the winds divide, the day eclipses:
once more have I escaped from my death.
Child of the hundred mountains, the beasts of memory,
hold onto my hand and pray that you too become unknown:
that you laugh at shadows, cry among the living,
remember broken statues, and imitate the chants
of the orphaned hummingbird.
Upon the paper night your soul wanders,
neither visitor nor sage, you become all, yet remain hidden;
(at times I wish I could deceive fate)
yet you remain worth the uncertainties, the silhouettes.
Field of wilted pages, astrolabes, and tabernacles,
the moment loses its urgency, the storms now cease.
Listen to the gallops of the restless dream,
(the one from which the morning is born)
count the thorns shattered beneath:
a tree grows, ageless daughter.
Faceless people collect upon the shores,
their hands scream of the devoured branch,
of the lost summer ­­ a dog tears at its flesh,
and do you remember when I, too, was from this mark?
Do you remember my desires of delirium?
Tonight forms into today, today breathes upon something
­­ a hopeful chasm or a serpent's laugh ­­
and daughter of all women, blossom of the soul­bound twilight,
I have found gardens of blood (where ice and igneous once was)
I feel the voice of years singing (where sleepless vines kept weeping)
and from my body lunged the phantoms of the labyrinths,
out onto the tides of amethyst and oblivion: crucified.
I play songs upon instruments of bone,
revolutions no longer the slaves to the shadow,
and laugh from the peak of the nomadic graveyard;
to drink from the wine, to finally drink of the wine!
Let the mountains sever from the earth,
let them shout, let them wander.
Lament the silhouettes and the windmills,

3. carve your oceans: my soul, a desert,
now a new world that has bloomed ­­
with wasps, the lizards, the rain ­­
and a shadow that no longer laughs,
and a hand that no longer tremors,
and a spirit destined to die by its writing,
upon a body of torn papyrus.