we're nothing at all without danger

You loved danger. 

Some people think a tough childhood 

marked your palms' dry creekbeds forever, 

and thus your breaking through borders, 

that propensity to gravitate to fringes, holes. 

 

The trucks came from Ireland, from Denmark, to load fish. 

You liked to climb on their tailgates 

and—as they picked up speed—to jump, 

in three, four steps, and hit the dirt. 

 

You picked up old bombs bare-handed, 

come by on the old war front, 

in the underbrush we found the trenches, 

like wounds too deep, unable to heal. 

 

You loved danger, 

and I realize we're nothing at all without danger: 

can't go through a door, go to sea, no lovers. 

Time has passed since those years, 

and today, the eyes of those who predicted your death 

are the eyes of winter-killed finches. 

 

[Kirmen Uribe {1970- }, 'Danger', from Meanwhile Take My Hand, translated from the Basque by Elizabeth Macklin]