Translated by Salvador Carrasco
Artwork by Cassandra Carrasco
-
Para mi amigo Salvador
—en este caso, la desesperación con que estamos tratando siempre de tocarnos,
como si el único Dios fuera este amigo distante...
EL CUIDADO DE LOS AMIGOS
1.
Emocionados ante la puerta
la declaramos abierta.
Los fantasmas son un hábito
de espacios bajos,
sótanos, bibliotecas,
nada más.
Kant es un brillo o espejismo en el Báltico,
Hegel una gaviota, los desfallecimientos del deseo
limpian los platos de la mesa,
estruendo de porcelana, no significa nada
esta comida. No comas. Nunca como.
Una bandera aletea en los bordes de una mala idea.
2.
Vuelve a mí que estás lejos
y tú, de entre todos mis inquisidores,
no te perdono tu silencio,
el silencio me come,
que no dices me devora.
3.
Es una especie de plegaria, una rata en el rincón
de los evangelios, la cortina de cuero pende en la puerta de la iglesia,
aquí se sentó el verdugo, allá los leprosos atisbaron
por las rendijas y escucharon la sacra campana,
sus propias y discordantes cámpanas enmudecidas, sus badajos,
oyeron decir que Dios también es un leproso, y que tañe Su campana
en el corazón de la misa cuando el cuerpo de Jesús
está justo aquí, súbitamente entre nosotros, una blanca
hostia, hecha de harina de trigo, una especie de pan
blanco como leproso, blanco como el conocer.
4.
Cuando todo el mundo espera ser conocido.
No vamos a misa. Las iglesias conocen lentamente.
Necesitamos un río rápido como el Scheldt en crecida,
el Sawkill inundando a través de lisimaquios y los gansos
se dispersan en la primera noche fría. Vuelve a mí
tú que eres ave acuática y lejana, vuelve a mí
alada insolencia del silencio
vuelve a mi corazón inquieto, soy un hombre por dentro,
no puedo evitar el vacío de las iglesias,
los pabellones azules en que los infieles se sacian.
5.
Adondequiera que fui estuve solo.
Y por qué te necesito,
porque el sin-ti es una palabra impronunciable,
el silencio llama al silencio.
Habla. Eso trato,
no es fácil tener la
razón en un mundo frágil
en que lo malo es tan cercano.
cada contacto
es un nuevo tipo de enfermedad.
Y la única cura,
¿cómo podría estar sólo hablando?
— 23 de octubre de 1996 -
Le temps présent,
l'ombre éternelle
qui nous appelle
jusqu'au départ
long et inconsolable
des hommes morts.
Les hommes morts
se dispersent silencieux
dans la femme vivante.
La femme vivante
a rêvé sa mémoire
et se imaginera l'amour.
L'amour
se meurt oublié
...et de peur
autrefois
se protégeait
entre les pierres.
Les pierres,
les miroirs sincères
dans lesquels les verités
a cessé
la tendre rigueur
de la mort.
— le douze novembre 1989 -
The present
land with no memory
inconsolable departure
of dead men.
Dead men
quietly inhabiting
the living man.
The living man
dreams his memory
and lies of love.
Love
dies forlorn
and armored
in fear
scurries
between the stones.
Stones
in whose truth
the tender rigor
of death
has ceased. -
(EL NIÑO YUNTERO)
Flesh of yoke has been born
more humiliated than loved
with his neck persecuted
by the yoke to which it’s chained.
Born like a tool
destined to the blows
of an unhappy earth
and a dissatisfied plough.
Amidst pure and living excrement
of cows, he brings to life
a soul made of olives
already old and bruised.
As he begins to live, he begins
to die with no end in sight
scraping with the plough
his mother’s crust.
As he starts to feel, he feels
life as a war
and laboriously yields
to the bones of the land.
He cannot count his own years,
yet he knows that sweat
is a dignified crown
of salt for the laborer.
He works, and as he works
with masculine seriousness
he is anointed with rain and jeweled
with flesh from the cemetery.
By virtue of blows, strong
and by weighing the sun, burnished
with an ambition of death
he shreds his hard-fought bread.
Each new day he is
more root, less creature,
who hears under his feet
the voice of the grave.
And like the root he is, he sinks
slowly into the earth
so that the earth may flood
his brow with bread and peace.
It pains me this hungry child
like an endless thorn,
and his life of ashes
resolves my oaken soul.
I see him plough the remains
and devour a scrap
and declare with his eyes
why must he be flesh of yoke.
His plough strikes at my chest,
his life down my throat,
and I suffer with the fallow earth
that grows under his sole.
Who is going to save this child
smaller than a grain of oat?
From where will it emerge,
the hammer that breaks this chain?
From the hearts
of working men
who before being men are
and have been children of plough.
(1/1/2015) -
(MENOS TU VIENTRE)
Except for your womb,
all is confusing.
Except for your womb,
all is fleeting future,
barren, hazy past.
Except for your womb,
all is uncertain,
all comes to an end,
dust without world.
Except for your womb,
all is dark.
Except for your womb,
clear and profound. -
(CANCION ULTIMA)
Painted, not vacant:
my home is painted
the color of great
passions and of loss.
It will return from the lament
to which it was carried away
with its empty table
and its tearful bed.
Kisses will flower
over the pillows.
And entangled around bodies
the blanket will rise
like an intense clinging plant
nocturnal, perfumed.
Hatred is kept at bay
behind the window.
It shall be a tender claw.
At least give me some hope
(12/31/2014) -
(LA BOCA)
Mouth that carries my mouth:
mouth that has carried me away:
mouth which comes from afar
to enlighten me with your rays.
Dawn which bestows on my nights
a red and white splendor.
Mouth inhabited by mouths:
bird teeming with birds.
Song that turns its wings
upward and downward.
Death reduced to kisses
thirsting for a slow death,
strike the bleeding grass
with a pair of luminous flaps.
The upper lip, heaven
and earth, the other lip.
Kiss that rolls in the shadow:
kiss that comes rolling by
from the first cemetery
to the last stars.
Your mouth, a star
silent and closed
until a celestial touch
makes her eyelids tremble.
Kiss that spells a future
of girls and boys
who will bear no more
empty streets or fields.
How many buried mouths
without mouths we unbury!
I drink in your mouth for them,
from your mouth I drink for so many
who fell over the wine
of loving glasses.
Today they are memories, memories
distant and bitter kisses.
Mouth that unburied
the most transparent dawn
with your tongue. Three words,
three inherited flames:
life, death, love. Therein
written on your lips. -
(TU NO)
Not you, princess, not you.
You are different.
You are not like the other
girls I’ve encountered.
Even if men look at you
the way they do.
Even if other girls
murmur with envy
when they see
what you mean to me...
Not you, princess, not you.
You are the rose
Who had to be born
Among thistles
In open defiance
Of a merciless slum
Where the day is busy
Eroding all hope.
You are not to witness
Life passing you by
Mistreated and unloved
Without seeing fulfilled
A single promise,
He tells her as he
Strokes the hair
Of his princess.
Not you, princess, not you.
You have not been born
To endure the same fatigue
I once endured
Sucking the marrow
From a miserable
Wage that barely
Pays your rent.
Not you, princess, not you.
I swear to God:
You won’t bend down
Scrubbing floors
Tending bars
Forced to smile
At predators
You won’t end up
Like your mother
Drinking your woes
Wiping off the stench
Of men’s memories
From your body.
You will leave this filth
Of half-starved dreams.
I can already imagine their faces
When you appear in a carriage
Next to someone you love,
Who loves you back
And takes pride in you,
He tells her as he kisses
The scarred forehead
Of his princess.
Not you, princess, not you.
Come back while you still can...
He follows you down
The dark street
But it’s only to iron
The crease that your dress
Imprints on your bare torso.
And like those who see
An angel ascend into heaven
He sees her drifting into someone
Else’s arms, having learned
All he ever taught her.
Now she’s a great actress
She studies, she flies
She affects people’s lives
And despite all appearances
This unique princess
Still remembers his eyes. -
(THE ROAD NOT TAKEN)
Dos caminos divergían en un bosque incierto,
Y lamentando no poder emprender ambos
Y ser un solo viajero, me quedé imaginándolos...
Entonces tome el otro, como pude haber tomado aquél,
Y quizá fue la mejor decisión de mi vida,
Porque éste tenía más pasto y requería ser caminado. -
A la memoria digna del poeta
SEXTETING ON A 6TH OF MARCH, 1982
(Variations on the word of Luis Rius)
I.
I am a shadow
a shadow which flees
from itself
and does not;
love enamors her
and she enamors love.
The times she is mostly enamored
the most my shadow is mine
and is not.
II.
Like our spring is springself
you are always yourself;
your truces are the sea's, dismayed
and again, like our sea, you wave.
Like your spring and my sea
you are for no one
but your surrender
is mine and for mankind...
And rather than being mine
spring, my true love,
will ceaselessly die.III.
He put his rifle to his face;
he shot as he aimed the bullet
with dexterity in his eye.
(He only broke one of two wings.)
Not by the heights he could have flown
nor by the lightness of his wings
nor because of being,
being a bird of lineage,
was he saved from impending Death.
The hunter was skillful:
God's angel collapsed.IV.
The tiger hunted doves
--between his jaws he brought them--
he thought they were flowers,
food he would never devour.
To the tigeress he gave them
as he arrived to their shelter.
She loved him because of this:
for his most courteous manner.
V.
It is a nostalgia of you
that I treasure in my mind
and deep inside
my thorn-stained heart.
Indeed, it hurts like blood
but its scent shrouds me
as only solitude does.
In my loneliness I recall
the tenuous and simple thought
of a magical illusion
which we together dreamed
and only in dreams arrived.
What I already lived,
forever elapsed;
what I today live,
passes me by;
all else...
shall never arrive.
My life is as useless
as a single line
drawn in the sand
by nobody's hand:
It might be yours,
but it is mine.
Para Luz María
VI.
My lover, only you
shattered my remembrances;
my love, in this desert
anxious for your breast
only the subtle touch
of passion is deserved.
Today is an endless yesterday
and yesterday is your prey.
My glance seeks for you
impassible, in a far distance
not now but away...
for few minutes remain
between our hands
lonesome and dead.
I can not mislead myself
you were meant to be the first
my most precious illusion,
that which would not arrive
and, without arriving,
will not ever pass.
— March 6, 1982 / Mexico City
