poems
El poema del exilio (hacer click para ver presentación)
(From the Book: Piedra en :U:)
(:U: Stone) Forthcoming 2015
Translated by Linde M. Brocato
Sarajevo
prisoner of the fear of what will come (like it came before)
how might the mutilated recover serenity?
how might he reconcile himself to the idea that he had one time about
the progression of the Night
-believing that Morning would tell the truth in the face
of all the shadows’ misconceptions-
_______
(From the Book: Paréntesis del Estupor) BOOK:
(Parenthesis of Stupor) 2011.
The Rose of Decomposition
Serious was the dispute between destruction and
alchemy
well Who could admire the rose of decomposition?
Who would make a place for a stem of invisible color
sprouting up from the rotten-tough-ness?
What was inexorable was ferocious,
rending like the sizzle of a calcined branch
The bone of the wager
coming back from the excavation brings broken cartilages The bone
of the wager
is a short rag
hanging in tatters
but in the distance they keep counting the dry grains of flour
that doesn’t suffice
-the sick man unattended in the desert stretch- The thirst that doesn’t
ease but offers up
Its dryness
______
(From the Book: Las regiones del frío
(The Chilli Regions) 2005
under ground
and we know not what to do with returning After the idea of dying
and after the idea of killing
no longer the same Dust rises twice in our eyes
the future detained by one hand with memory By one cup
of cold coffee
The life of the survivor is worse than his death: carrying living eyes
under ground
the crows
in the ages of the great tombs everything was white Roofs Floors Walls
and even if there was no air nor doors nor windows in silence one glimpsed
great horizons
at some always exact hour in that age very nice people laid down well dressed
It was in truth a pleasure to be dead in those days: Shelter Food
Water Everything Well Organized
only the nerve of the crows in dreams Was the one
irregularity to stand
the imagined morning
through the midst of the hair of the city Crosses the still intimate flower
of thought
lost in the noise and clouded by the gloom of the smoke It was
the seed
germinated in the hothouse of the night It was the flower of the morning
imagined
ripped out tongues
within the metal doors have fallen and without fingers we trace hermetic locks
There’s no light in the shadow Nor heat in the cold because in times of war
only silence breathes
toward where to raise ears or lips from the lock-up? us, the angels don’t speak
or hush
(like a nest of lizards without a nest our hands and our feet pray, eyeless)
Us, the fused iron in doors and coins neither speaks nor hushes
because projectiles are not kept under ripped out tongues
bird of thirst
not from just any tear descends a body of crystalline water
not every tear is a bird of thirst. Not every tear is rain
for re-greening:
some flowers have an aroma of nausea
Tiny Metals
my son We are bits of shrapnel in a shattered world
tiny metals sparking in vivid red and dying on the ground
threads child of someone else’s conversation
lesser bones cartilage of a crackling that doesn’t know us
we are child tenuous blazes of some other light
fog disappearing in cracks in stone
we are love inaudible groan in the muteness of the grass
covered by a heavenly garb fallen among the trees
_____
(From the Book: El eterno aprendiz
(The Eternal Apprentice) 1995
Asceticism
Night:
Are you the lack of sense?
or are you the lack of imagination?
Are you, Night,
the hanging shadows?
Are you the proof of the failure of light?
Or are you, Night,
the long
wide
expectant
desire of day,
its asceticism,
its resignation,
its unworthiness?
The eternal apprentice
Perhaps in silence there is light
a glimmer of illumination
an acquiescence
mystery has its own patience
its strength
its ancient sobs
perhaps one is the bone of mystery
its sculpted bone
its solitary memory
one
the writer of the unknown
the student of the ear
the eye’s son
reading its notes
studying its memories
one
the eternal apprentice
the countable finger
threading invisible strings
so as to braid unknowing
_______
(Del libro Pompeya)
(Pompeii) 2003
Pompeii
my heart had been destroyed in Pompeii
the sun wounded yet again
the cracks of a shattered world
small
polished stones
continued to reflect
yesterday’s moon:
and I was able to recognize
my father’s body
among the debris
and I brushed up against my sisters
silent in the broken columns
Some trees produced flesh flowers
and offered among the ruins
their odorless
heavy hands
noonday children
lying still
beneath the earth
all that was intimate
was a someone else’s spectacle
and respect
was but dust beneath all our feet.
my heart recognized itself
among its kin
all of its family was there:
their emptied faces
poured out onto stone
and contemplated
by strangers
without love
A Poor Man
One hears a dead tongue: what for
…
Lock on the silence: what for
Butchering croaks: what-for, what-for
Gabriel Zaid
I
a poor man
has no new memories
because a poor man
has nowhere to store them
II
a poor man broods
his mind vacant:
what happened to my river of sweet water?
where is my dawn?
My seed sown in the teeth of the wind
it’s lost
it’s completely disappeared
III
a poor man
doesn’t know time:
how long does it last?
where does it go?
where does death begin
entering a hayfield?
a slender silent
forgetfulness
burying itself in a furrow
of spring water
IV
a poor man
has no tomorrow
what dream would he have to dream?
if his birds are gone
he knows they are gone
he spends entire nights, brooding
they’re gone
V
a poor man
can’t dream of yesterday
the flood washed everything away
and the hot drought scorched the ground
what happened to the little stones
that connected us?
where did they go?
the fingers that joined us
what happened to them?
VI
a poor man
has no fingers in his vacant mind
birds are born to fl y
but what happened to his fingers?
his fingers are gone
he knows they are gone
VII
a poor man has no place
nothing is more uncertain than a place
the moment your eye is turned
already your place is gone
Yesterday isn’t the same place as it was today
why sow seed?
if a wild storm may come
and erase the marks made
with a hoe
and the marks meant nothing
they were only posture
and gesticulation
VIII
a poor man
can’t talk
why talk?
nothing is more tranquil
than silence
in his vacant mind
the silence sleeps
and when you sleep you don’t think
thinking would waste the silence
and a poor man lacks the wherewithal to waste anything
IX
a poor man broods
and the brooding thinks for him:
and even the little river in my head?
even the little river?
and that thing of light I once had
what was it?
and the hunger and the food
what was that?
and what about the thirst of What was it?
X
the Whatwasit was a bird
the fi rst
all of them were first
but the Whatwasit sang the most
a song of pure sound all around
often was heard back then
the Whatwasit’s question
its music was a long extended question
an uninterrupted cantata
it was the shadow of the Whatwasit
then its absence
XI
a poor man
isn’t surprised by anything
he even falls asleep in water
so that he leaves a trickle behind him
wherever he goes a trickle
of improvised river
improvised, not really a river
of the tears of a man
who doesn’t know he’s crying
he himself is creating his own river
the river he lost
he thinks it’s only water
water fl owing past
XII
a poor man
even eats mosquitos
or such things
because he stands astonished, open mouthed
and he takes in whatever comes
so what
if it’s a speck of something
a living speck?
so what
if it’s a strand of feather?
so what
if it reminds you
of me?
XIII
Whatelse was the quietest
of all the birds
it didn’t even seem like a bird
one of those that flew away
Whatelse let itself drift off
into pure contemplation
paying no attention to anything
because Whatelse knew
that one moment follows the next
without making the slightest difference
adding nothing to the conversation
so Whatelse didn’t converse
or rather, it didn’t sing
what it did was a solo
a summation
of nothing over nothing
and nothing expected
XIV
Whatelse spun out airy threads
and awaited the unfolding of events
indifferent to everything
it went away without staying
and stayed without going away
which was all the same thing
Whatelse spoke like that
without saying what for
XV
Whatfor was a frightful bird
an owl staring in broad daylight
a hawk darker than the rest
perhaps a raven
a repulsive thing that wouldn’t fly away
Whatfor spread its wings
above the others
and there was no way
Whatfor could be moved
XVI
when a poor man
tries to remember
his memory
is a motionless monotonous
indistinguishable pile
XVII
a poor man
doesn’t want to reckon his loss
nor look at it closely
nor have a new loss
if loss goes away
it can be replaced by wherewithal
first loss coalesces
then
it rises downward
and to the side and goes away
with no explanation or goodbye
that’s how loss
becomes wherewithal
XVIII
Wherewithal was the most powerful
perhaps Wherewithal was the first
all of them were first
but Wherewithal was all powerful
with the power of the verb to be able
it was able to say enough
and finish saying it
it could blot out with its body
everything
that came before and after it
all it had to do was buzz around in the breeze
and presto
neither was there nothing
only Wherewithal
Wherewithal eventually became the terror of the sky
the small sky of the same place
small places have small kings
but still, finally, kings
XIX
Finally was the last
you might say
sweetest
and most intelligent
it came after Withoutwhich
XX
Withoutwhich was the smallest
completely transparent
Withoutwhich was the rarest
because it never showed itself
it had no beak no head
no body no gender
no feathers
nothing
it wasn’t even a bird
it wasn’t even nothing
XXI
Withoutwhich eventually ceased to exist
it was in fact a shadow
and not only a single shadow
it was the shadow of the air
the shadow of the tree where it stood
the shadow of its tracks
far beneath its tracks
the shadow of its single leaf et
single far above it
the shadow of its memory
of nothingness
XXII
a poor man broods
his mind vacant
his shadow cast
by the sun of night
XXIII
for Finally you can also say The End
the one conferring rest
the other pardon
________
(From the Book Inmovil)
(Immobile, 1996.
a gentle fragance
a gentle fragrance
fills my hand and my hand’s house
I dawned in the eye
of bitterness
not even a bed for me in the holding
Far is the undecipherable hour
The Rose
the rose
feels
vertigo
from stillness:
the slow
labor
of dying
_________
(Del libro Ca(z)a)
(Hu(n)t) 1990
you must not drown yourself
you must not drown yourself Thus so many times
in your own water of flesh
everything so strange
Weak:
shouldn’t have let you work from rage
from incapacity
now you don’t see me
with that bone out in front of your face
not me With
the other side toward the back
what will we do
what will be done
since I don’t hear your eyes then I don’t think about
you
with that bird or dog
to fly over you at night
perhaps won’t come
if this he had loved us
we stay
we stay
so you don’t die
so they don’t know that we went:
those heads rolling along the ground
those jaws slobbering like the mouths of smiling
animals
from your house
where flesh
like an irregular bulb
like freshly emerged from earth
so that you don’t die
from death or from the fear that the heads give you with
their sound
Better to bury it
so as not to see
it seeing us
that way
so haggard
so stupid
tell me if it hurts you
tell me if it hurts you
and here
and here
and here
I have such a high and low concept of bodies
FACE-DOWN:
if you stay like that
if something happens to you
It will be rancor
IT WILL BE RANCOR
there’s nothing more to see
beyond you and I Face Down
nothing worth seeing
there’s not a place better
If it hurts you
here when living
has suddenly become
a great dire opened
repulsive
vulgar
I who have such high
and low
concepts
mama went away
mama went away
delays many years beneath her door
red water pouring
papa curses her
before going mama didn’t talk anymore
didn’t open her eyes
after she shut the door of her room
and refused to come back
behind the door she calls us sometimes
and shouts a story about a house about a sweet that one eats
and weeps at length
and laughs
and one hears things that break
and mama talks for spells hoarse like a man
like a distant night
and hits
and we hear her scrape
against the walls
and a river of mama flows from beneath the door
a pink and sad river that doesn’t move
in the care of a mother
in the care of a mother who was pure gesticulation
to suffer
for some little heads now dead
that never died
always begging for comfort
and us purely eating
always meals alone
clothes alone sun alone
because she didn’t feed
nor was light
but just pure begging for help
pure shouting with her eyes
pure begging more water
pure begging more shadow
pure wound of hers
her red inwards
her Showing herself
when he’s died
when he’s died
one goes
and opens his jaws
and puts our mouth within his mouth
and says to him
Speak
Tell me my woman
When he’s laid out
one goes and mounts him on the gallows
on his last legs
and tells him
Go in
Make me my woman
Then one shouts my love inside
Then one stoops before him
bites his last hand
and wishes him death
my husband who lives interred
my husband who lives interred
it’s the same to him life or death
I and the children go sometimes
we run on his surface
EEEE we shout to him
with our mouths pressed to the ground
CO-O-O-OME OUT we want to see you
come to see this sun these people these animals
we are happy
The dark part of him doesn’t say hello
or he gets sad with his hand
or makes signs for us to go away
Come out we are alone from you
we don’t know
we don’t know
solitude
we at the point of the distant
receive water from the sky
the feet of the mother are hands for her children
day and night we dance day and night grateful
we look in each other’s eyes day and night quietly
grateful
we know not
that we’re going along sinking
in the act of singing
by separating and burying
and closing our hands
we can hardly see ourselves
erased In the land of the eyes
in the land of the mouth
we can’t
say the words of Asking
of We are sorry
we know not
that we’re going along Falling from afar
falling from god we
go along falling from the mother with her children
clutched
my mouth
my mouth
is thick and dark for Naming you
or our childhood
I was afraid of your slowness
when the sky was falling
and the clouds were stones of great death
Never no one had in their eyes
so much begging bird
I was running and dragged you along
in the silence of the dogs
beneath the earth
panting
Never did they have other eyes together
so much safe bird
your weight is
my heaviest loss
The red bird of my air
The red bird of my air
left
his head Flaming
hops
wanted to leave
Now
when I think of I want him to Come back
unable to see
or hear or water
without feeding grains
on the shore
I say to him
My bird
And what if I had eyes again?
And sips of water in the hollows
of clear waters?
And what if I wore fruit again
of every Flaming color?
And I had the heat
that the cold doesn’t have My red
And I had music in my head
And I dawned?
Would you?
(Translated by Andres Fernandez)
maría auxiliadora álvarez 
Leave a Reply