Psalm

From the German of Paul Celan

No one will model us from clay again, 

no one will discuss our dust. 

No one.

Exist as applause, no one. 

We open into bloom because we want you. 

In opposition. To.

A nothing we were, are, shall remain, 

opening: the no, the rose

of no one.

With its stigma spirit-clear, the ovule heaven-bare, 

a stylus red from purple word, what we sang for, 

over the spear.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Niemand knetet uns wieder aus Erde und Lehm, 

niemand bespricht unsern Staub. 

Niemand. 

Gelobt seist du, Niemand. 

Dir zulieb wollen wir blühn. 

Dir entgegen. 

Ein Nichts waren wir, sind wir, werden 

wir bleiben, blühend: die Nichts-, die 

Niemandsrose. 

Mit dem Griffel seelenhell, dem Staubfaden himmelswüst, 

der Krone rot vom Purpurwort, das wir sangen 

über, o über dem Dorn. 

Two Swans

The French word Cygne connotes both Swan and Symbol

The Swan by Charles Baudelaire

to Victor Hugo

I.

Andromache, I think of you! Formerly resplendent,

This small river, this poor and sad mirror, on which once lay

The immense majesty of your bereavement,

Your tears streaming from this Simois' lie

My memory teems with pity

As I cross the new Carrousel.

Old Paris is no more (the shape of a city

Changes more quickly, alas! than the heart of a mortal);

I don't see but in spirit all that was here before,

This rubble of columns, outlines, shafts, capitals,

A brilliant chaos of ruins across the floor,

The weeds, the large blocks turned green by the puddles.

There a menagerie sprawled where now are stumps;

There I live, where, any morning, under the skies

The cold light of industry wakes, the refuse dump

Heaves a dark, sombre hurricane into air so quiet.

A swan that had escaped from its cage

Rubs the pavement with its webbed feet,

And trails over the rough ground its white plumage.

Near a dry gutter the animal opens its beak,

Bathes its wings nervously in the powder,

And says, heart full of its native lake:

"Water, when will you rain? When will you thunder?"

I see this hapless myth, strange, fatal, fake,

Bend towards the sky sometimes, like the man of Ovid,

Toward a sky ironic and cruelly blue,

Its convulsive neck stretching a greedy head,

As if its reproaches to God would accrue!

II.

Paris has changed! But my melancholy

hasn't budged! New palaces, scaffolding, blocks,

Old wards, all have turned into allegory,

And my memories are heavier than rocks.

And so, in front of the Louvre I'm oppressed by an image:

I think of my large swan, with the gestures of a fool,

Like an exile, ridiculous, sublime, disengaged

And gnawed by a desire without end! And then to you,

Andromache, your arms around your great fallen husband,

Abject cattle, under the hand of glorious Pyrrhus,

By an empty grave in the raptures of grief you can't withstand;

Widow of Hector, alas! and woman of Hellas!

I think of the Negress, asthmatic and gaunt,

Haggard-eyed, in mud she slogs

Seeking superb Africa's coconuts, absent

Behind the immense wall of fog;

With whoever is lost and not found

Never, never! With those who steep in tears

And suckle as at a she-wolf the Pain, spellbound!

With the meager orphans drying like flowers!

Thus in the forest, my exiled spirit's land,

An old Memory sounds with full breath of its horn!

I think of sailors forgotten on an island,

The prisoners, The vanquished!... for the good of others once more!

The Swan by Stephan Mallarme 

The virginal, vivid, the beautiful today

Will it tear us to cray with a drunk stroke of wing

Forgotten in the frost on the hard lake floor rings,

Haunted by glaciers of flights that couldn't convey?

A swan from long ago remembers: It is he

Magnificent without hope who is delivered

For not having sung about the flowing river

When the sterile cold offered resplendent ennui.

His long questioning neck writhes in white agony

In the void occupied by the bird that denied

All but his shock at how the earth took his feather.

In place of his brilliance, this phantom's all one sees,

Immobilized with a cold, contemptuous eye

That dresses useless swans for the exile weather.

The Dove

A translation of Jacques Brel inspired by this sublime rendition by chanteuse Judy Collins  

Oh why this fanfare

When the soldiers in fours

Attend to massacres 

On the railway platform?

Why do the sighs and purrs

Of the trains as they go down

Conduct us only here

To the killing ground?

Why do songs, do cries

Call the blooming crowds to rise

To whatever con they play

When they can walk away?

We will no longer go to the woods injured dove 

We will go no longer to the woods to kill love

What hour has come about?

When did our childhood end?

When does our luck run out?

When it's loaded with men

On a heavy convoy train

Repainted in a night

Atop a rail of rain

Who wait in gray to fight?

Why does this train roll again?

Why to this ancient tomb?

Why are windows drawn again

Across the nighttime room?

We will no longer go to the woods injured dove 

We will go no longer to the woods to kill love

And why the monuments?

The phrases already said?

What defeat is offered us

When the future is dead?

What is this stillborn child

We call our victory?

Why walk the glory mile

Of someone else's story?

Why must the earth be veiled

In grey to block the sun?

Because the night will come

In the sunset of a gun?

We will no longer go to the woods injured dove 

We will go no longer to the woods to kill love

Why does your sweet visage

Unglue from all your tears?

At the start of this voyage

Who gave me arms for here?

Why, when it gets dark

Does your body disappear?

Do i stand upon the pier

To be a souvenir?

Why, in these next few days

When all this should be thought

Will I spend them in your arms

Naked to your soul, and caught?

We will no longer go to the woods injured dove 

We will go no longer to the woods to kill love

The Voyage

From the French of Charles Baudelaire

To Maxime Du Camp

I.
To the child, passionate for maps and stamps,
The Universe is equal to his appetite.
Ah! That the world looks large in the clarity of lamps
But tiny in hindsight.

We left one morning, our brains full of flame,
Our hearts huge with rancor and bitter desire,
And we went, following the rhythm of the untamed
Waves that cradle our infinity within the sea's finality of fire:

Some, joyous to flee the infamy of their homeland;
Others, horrified in their cradles; in view of the moon
Astrologers drown in the eyes of a woman,
Tyrannical Circe with her dangerous perfumes.

Not to be changed into beasts, we go higher
Into space and light and the blazing sky;
The ice that bites us, the sun that fires
Will efface the rash of love slowly.

But the true voyager is he who leaves
To leave something; light hearts, resembling balloons,
Never shrink from their fate's weave
And, without knowing why, always say: onward, go on!

There are those whose desires are formed of clouds,
And who dream, thus the cannon conscripts came,
The vast voluptuous, changeable, unknowable crowds
The human mind can never name.

II.
We mimic — O horror — the top and the ball
In their waltz, bound, and bounce; even our dreams run,
Our curiosity tortures us and we roll,
Like an Angel cruelly whisking the suns.

Singular fortune where the target moves west,
And, being nothing, carries perhaps the meaning of all:
Of Man, whose hope never lessens,
Always trying to find rest like a fool.

Our soul is a schooner seeking its Icarus;
A voice reaches from the bridge: "Fix your eyes, far."
A voice from the topmast, eager and crazy, shouts to us:
"Love...glory...happiness." Hell! It's a sandbar.

At each island, man's vigilant gaze goes foraging,
For the Eldorado promised by destiny's night;
The imagination creates an orgy
That turns out to be a reef in the morning light.

The poor lovers of things that are chimeras!
Should they be put in irons, thrown to the sea,
These hard-drinking sailors, inventors of Americas,
Does the mirage make the abyss more deep?

Like the old vagabond, tramping in the sewer,
Dreaming, his nose in the air, of a paradise that dazzles;
His entranced eyes discover a Capua
Everywhere the candle illuminates a hovel.

III.
Astonishing travelers! Whose noble stories
Are read on eyes as deep as the ocean!
Bring us the chest of your rich memories,
Marvelous jewels, made of stars and ether in motion.

We would travel without steam and without sail
To ease the sadness of our prisons,
To call into our minds, stretched like a veil,
A canvas of memories in the frame of your horizons.

Tell us, what have you seen?

IV.
               "We have seen stars
And floods; we have seen bare sand stare;
And, despite the shocks of unforeseen disasters,
We could not go on with life's tedium, just like here.

Glorious sunshine on the violet sea,
Glorious cities in declining sun,
Burn in our hearts an unquiet plea
To plunge in the sky's enticing reflection.

The richest cities, the grandest landscapes
Will never contain the mysterious charge
Of chance meeting the cloudbreaks.
Desire makes us anxious, ever more large!

— Enjoyment joins desire to our will,
Desire, ancient tree whose pleasure is manure,
Your bark grows hard and thick,
Your branches long to see the sun nearer.

Do you never stop growing, large tree with a harder look
Than the cypress? — Yet we are, without worry,
Picking sketches for your voracious scrapbook,
Like brothers who only find the distant worthy.

We have bowed to the fraudulent icons:
The constellations where joy is illumined;
The palaces whose gilded fantasies of pomp
Make the banker's dreams ruined;

The costumes clothed for the inebriated eye;
The women whose teeth and nails are dyed,
And the sage jugglers the snake caresses."

V.
And now, what is next?

VI.
               "O Childish brain!

Don't forget the most interesting principle:
We have seen in everything, without looking,
From the heights to the depths went the fatal scale,
The spectacle of ennui, of immortal sin.

The woman, the filthy slave, conceited and stupid,
Without laughing adores and loves herself, as if a lure;
The man, the ravenous tyrant, debauched, merciless Cupid,
Slave of the slave and gutter of the sewer;

The happy executioner, the martyr who sobs;
The feast with the seasoning and scent of blood;
The poison that unnerves the enervated despot,
And the mob that forms from a deadening whip — love;

Many religions resemble our own,
All scale the sky; the Saintly,
As in a feather bed where the delicate wallow,
Find in horsehair and nails ecstasy;

Chattering Humanity, on her genius tipsy,
And crazy, now as ever before is it true,
Crying out to God, in her furious agony:
'O my mate, O my Master, I curse you!'

And the least stupid, bold lovers of Lunacy,
Flee the great herd that Destiny pens in,
And take refuge in opium's immensity!
— So the whole globe is one endless bulletin."

VII.
Bitter knowledge, that's the haul from the voyage!
The world, monotonous and small, today,
Yesterday, tomorrow, always, show us our image:
An oasis of horror in a desert of ennui!

Must one leave? Remain? If you can stay, stay;
Leave, if you must. The one shrinks, and the other cowers
To cheat the vigilant and fierce enemy,
Time! that's it, alas! giving no respite to the racers,

Like the wandering Jew and the apostles,
For whom nothing suffices, neither carriage nor vessel,
To flee these gladiator nets; Time is like all the others
Who can slaughter without leaving their cradle.

When finally it puts its foot on our spine,
We'll be able to shout out with hope: ahead!
Just as when we set sail for China,
Eyes fixed on the open sea and masthead,

We will embark on the sea of Darkness
With the happy heart of a young traveler.
Do you hear these voices, charming and lugubrious,
Which sing: "come here! you who want to devour

The perfumed Lotus! It is here that one harvests
The miraculous fruits for which your heart depends;
Allay your thirsts on the strange softness
Of an afternoon that will never end!"

With the familiar accent we foretell the spectre;
Our Pylades with their arms toward us outstretched.
"To refresh your heart swim toward your Electra!"
Where before we kissed the knees at best.

VIII.
O Death, old captain, it is time! Raise anchor!
This country bores us, O death! Sail on!
If the sky and sea like ink are black ore
Our hearts, as you know, give illumination.

Pour us your poison so it comforts us,
The flame that burns our mind so, we wish to
Plunge into Hell, or Heaven, what's the difference?
We plumb the Unknown to find the new!

The Dream of a Voyeur

From the French of Charles Baudelaire

To F-N

Do you know, like me, the sorrowful savor,
And of yourself do you say: "I am the man singular!"
— I was going to die. It was in my soul like a lover,
Desire mixed with horror, an evil particular;

Anguish and vivid hope, but not rebellious.
The more it emptied, the fatal hourglass,
The rougher my torture, the more delicious;
All my heart was torn off as the familiar world passed.

I was like the child greedy for spectacle,
Hating the curtain as one hates an obstacle
Finally the cold truth was delineated:

I was dead without surprise, and the terrible dawn
Enveloped me. — Eh what! Is that all there is to go on?
The canvas was raised and still I waited.

Catullus 16

From the Latin

I will prick you, Aurelius,
Tongue and throat your noble boy toy Furius,
Until you say what you think of my poetry,
A little soft, a little sheathed?
For a pious poet ought to be clean, 

There is no need, in fact, for verses
When there's fleur de sel and rabbits on the grass;
Let the lines purr gentle and a little chaste
And if the hairs stiffen for an itch
It's for those whose loins are never moved. 
You, who cover all the bases,
Did you read me wrong?
Do you think I am a male? 
I will prick you, Aurelius.

The Lemon Trees

From the Italian of Eugenio Montale

Can you hear me, poets laurel-wreathed
Still move only in leaves
Of plants with little use: boxwood, ligustrum, acanthus.
I, for one, esteem the streets that achieve the weediness 
Of ditches where, from standing pools
Boys fish out a few
Meager and haggard eels:
The gullies follow the embankments 
And fall through strands of reed
To open into orchards, of lemon trees.

Better for the lustrous squall of birds
To be smothered, swallowed in the azure:
More lucidly, then, the whisper is heard
In courteous branches the air barely stirs
And the aura of this odor
That does not know how to peel from the earth
Rains an uneasy sweetness on the heart.
Here our delight in our passions
By some miracle silences the war,
Here falls to us poor our share of the riches
And it is the odor of lemons.

Can you see, when things, in these silences 
Abandon themselves, and seem close 
To betraying their irrevocable secret,
How we expect sometimes 
To discover an oversight of nature, 
The dead point, the weak link,
The thread that, once unwound, puts us finally
In the midst of truth?
We scavenge around with our gaze,
Our mind examines attachment’s separations 
In a perfume that rampages
When the day languishes most.
They are the silences in which you see
In every human shade that breaks away
Some disturbed divinity.

But the illusion is missing, and time takes us back
To noisy cities where the sky only
Shows itself in shards, from above, inside the finials.
The rain wearies the earth, then; winter’s ennui
Crowds the houses,
The light turns stingy – the soul sour.
Then one day from a poorly closed door
Through the trees of a courtyard
We see the yellow of the lemons;
And the ice in our heart melts away,
And the sun’s golden trumpets
Thunder in our chest
Their songs.

-------------------------------------------------------------
I Limoni

Ascoltami, i poeti laureati
si muovono soltanto fra le piante
dai nomi poco usati: bossi ligustri o acanti.
lo, per me, amo le strade che riescono agli erbosi
fossi dove in pozzanghere
mezzo seccate agguantano i ragazzi
qualche sparuta anguilla:
le viuzze che seguono i ciglioni,
discendono tra i ciuffi delle canne
e mettono negli orti, tra gli alberi dei limoni.

Meglio se le gazzarre degli uccelli
si spengono inghiottite dall’azzurro:
più chiaro si ascolta il susurro
dei rami amici nell’aria che quasi non si muove,
e i sensi di quest’odore
che non sa staccarsi da terra
e piove in petto una dolcezza inquieta.
Qui delle divertite passioni
per miracolo tace la guerra,
qui tocca anche a noi poveri la nostra parte di ricchezza
ed è l’odore dei limoni.

Vedi, in questi silenzi in cui le cose
s’abbandonano e sembrano vicine
a tradire il loro ultimo segreto,
talora ci si aspetta
di scoprire uno sbaglio di Natura,
il punto morto del mondo, l’anello che non tiene,
il filo da disbrogliare che finalmente ci metta
nel mezzo di una verità.
Lo sguardo fruga d’intorno,
la mente indaga accorda disunisce
nel profumo che dilaga
quando il giorno piú languisce.
Sono i silenzi in cui si vede
in ogni ombra umana che si allontana
qualche disturbata Divinità.

Ma l’illusione manca e ci riporta il tempo
nelle città rumorose dove l’azzurro si mostra
soltanto a pezzi, in alto, tra le cimase.
La pioggia stanca la terra, di poi; s’affolta
il tedio dell’inverno sulle case,
la luce si fa avara – amara l’anima.
Quando un giorno da un malchiuso portone
tra gli alberi di una corte
ci si mostrano i gialli dei limoni;
e il gelo dei cuore si sfa,
e in petto ci scrosciano
le loro canzoni
le trombe d’oro della solarità.

Elon Musk Tweets a Poem

The twitter “verse” has been in an uproar for two days over South African billionaire Elon Musk’s posting of a famous ancient Chinese poem, without explanation, in traditional kanji. As with all famous ancient Chinese poems, many theories have been proposed. Is Musk sending a message of peace and brotherhood to the Chinese Communist Party? Is he thanking them for saving his life? Celebrating the anniversary of the apparent takeover of the United States by China? Admitting that his companies also benefit from Ughyur prisoner and child slave labor? Distinguishing himself from other plutocratic DARPA puppets like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates as someone considered to be an enemy but actually a brother? Slyly noting that the same AI programs now being used to manage the human race can be / are being used against the technocrats in charge? Or is he reminding the most populous country on earth that the human race must work together in the face of the overwhelming power and influence of off-world civilizations? 

As with all things Musk, the answer is inscrutable. He is like the fool (or joker) in the tarot deck, revealing truths while professing no fixed identity. 

The poem, attributed to the poet Cao Zhi, is taught to Chinese schoolchildren as “the quatrain of seven steps”, and it dates from a time when brothers vied, sometimes to the death, for kingdoms and privileges in China’s dynastic system. According to legend, one brother was about to kill another brother to take control of some minor belt of countryside but, seeing his eyes, offered him a chance to save his life by composing a beautiful poem. The life-saving poem reads as Musk tweeted it:

煮豆燃豆萁
豆在釜中泣
本是同根生
相煎何太急

My translation is as follows:

Bean straw heats the beans
Weeping in the pot
Out of the same root
Why are you afraid?

In other words, the burning straw that kills the soybeans formerly helped them grow, because it was part of the same plant. Thus, what the oppressor does to the victim it does to itself – in fact, it may be the true victim because it destroys what it created. The last line seals the anxiety created when one recognizes oneself in what one seeks to destroy. It also – as a work of poetic beauty – recognizes that there is nothing unnatural even in the killing of one’s brother, no need for emotion or attachment, it is only self-judgment that makes one’s actions painful.

From this basic framework, all the potential Musk interpretations listed above “fit.” Any authority seeking to deny the people their natural human rights will inevitably be toppled, because it is their humanity that ultimately gives them their power. And that is the delicate and subtle game of chicken transpiring now on the international / galactic stage, as the fundamental corruption at the root of how humanity is organized is slowly and painfully revealed to everyone. None of the current structures of society can survive in the new world, but people must first retract their consent. The extent to which the mass of humanity never noticed their enslavement before can be found in the gruesome long march currently ongoing where humanity is being silently herded into figurative and literal death camps until they finally scream “enough”. 

But, as the poem suggests, such collective dynamics need not cause weeping. One does not recognize one’s brother until a sword has been unsheathed against him. Such knowledge is more valuable than life itself, or at least more lasting than the courtly feuds of 2nd century AD. 

Night Ride: St. Petersburg

From the German of Rainer Maria Rilke

When we were back with the glossy trotters
(The black Orloff studs’ distinguishing sheen) -,
Behind the exalted candelabras
When city windows displayed an early green 
Adrift from the hour, saying nothing --, 
Drove, no: vanished or, rather, winged our way
Round the overbearing palace hairpins 
Wafting all the way to the Neva quays,

Carried away by the vigilant night
That had left both heaven and earth behind
By the time we came upon the rank blight
Of a garden unguarded, ill-defined
In the Letney-Sad, where the stone figures
Ascended from their impotent contours
And passed amidst us as we rode, transfigured -:

Then we heard the city 
Lift her being as well. She admitted 
She had never existed, and her plea
Was only for rest; like a madman stewed
And long confused comes suddenly unglued,
No longer able to be distracted
And betrayed from having to think again, 
As he feels himself facing a granite wall, 
Falling through his vacant, swaying brain 
Until you can no longer see him at all.

Rainer Maria Rilke, between August 9th and 17th, 1907, Paris
------------------------------------------------------------

Nächtliche Fahrt
Sankt Petersburg

Damals als wir mit den glatten Trabern
(schwarzen, aus dem Orloff'schen Gestüt) -,
wahrend hinter hohen Kandelabern
Stadtnachtfronten lagen, angefrüht,
stumm und keiner Stunde mehr gemäß -,
fuhren, nein: vergingen oder flogen
und um lastende Paläste bogen
in das Wehn der Newa-Quais,

hingerissen durch das wache Nachten,
das nicht Himmel und nicht Erde hat, -
als das Drängende von unbewachten
Garten gärend aus dem Ljetnij-Ssad
aufstieg, während seine Steinfiguren
schwindend mit ohnmächtigen Konturen
hinter uns vergingen, wie wir fuhren -:

damals hörte diese Stadt
auf zu sein. Auf einmal gab sie zu,
dass sie niemals war, um nichts als Ruh
flehend; wie ein Irrer, dem das Wirrn
plötzlich sich entwirrt, das ihn verriet,
und der einen jahrelangen kranken
gar nicht zu verwandelnden Gedanken,
den er nie mehr denken muss: Granit -
aus dem leeren schwankenden Gehirn
fallen fühlt, bis man ihn nicht mehr sieht.

Rainer Maria Rilke, zwischen dem 9. und 17.8.1907, Paris

Drunken Susan

From the Spanish of Jorge Luis Borges

With love she looked as the twilight hues

Agonized their slow dissipation.

It pleased her to disappear into

Curious verse, the tune’s complication.

But ‘twas not the root red but the grays

That spun her delicate destination;

She was made for nuance and delay

In her practice of discrimination.

So, not daring to tread any nearer

To the labyrinth’s perplexions she’d hide

Like that other lady in the mirror 

In the forms, their course, a cry from outside. 

At such prayers the Gods who dwell higher

Abandoned her to that tiger, the fire.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Susana Soca

Con lento amor miraba los disperses

Colores de la tarde. Le placía

Perderse en la compleja melodía

O en la curiosa vida de los versos.

No el rojo elemental sino los grises

Hilaron su destino delicado,

Hecho a discriminar y ejercitado

En la vacilación y en los matices.

Sin atreverse a hollar este perplejo

Laberinto, atisbaba desde afuera

Las formas, el tumulto y la carrera,

Como aquella otra dama del espejo.

Dioses que moran más allá del ruego

La abandonaron a ese tigre, el Fuego.

Moon and Insect Panorama (love poem)

From the Spanish of Frederico Garcia Lorca

The moon shines on the sea,

the wind moans in the sail 

and waves softly rise 

of silver and blue.

                              — Espronceda

My heart would be the shape of a shoe

if every village had a mermaid.

But the night is endless when you lean on the sick

and there are ships that seek to be seen in order to sink calmly.

If the air blows softly

my heart takes the shape of a girl.

If the air refuses to leave the reed beds

my heart takes the shape of an ancient bull's turd.

Row, row, row, row,

towards the battalion of unbalanced points,

towards a landscape of surveillance dust.

The same night of snow, of discontinued systems.

And the moon.

The moon!

But not the moon.

The taverns’ fox,

the Japanese rooster who ate your eyes,

chewed herbs.

The lonely ones in the glass don't save us,

nor the herbalists where the metaphysician

encounters the other side of the sky.

The forms are lies. Only the flow

of mouths to oxygen exists.

And the moon.

But not the moon.

The insects,

the tiny dead on the shore,

pain at length,

iodine on the wound,

the throng on a pin,

the exposed one who collects everyone’s blood,

and my love is not a foal or a scar,

creature whose heart was devoured.

My love!

They already sing, scream, moan: A face. Your face! Face.

The apples are few,

the dahlias identical,

the light has a taste of finished metal

and the last five years will fit into the cheek of the coin.

But your face covers the banquet of skies.

They sing! They scream! They moan!

They conceal! They mount! They scare!

It is necessary to walk – quickly! – by the waves, by the branches,

down the desolate streets of the Middle Ages to the river,

by the fur tents where the horn of a wounded cow lows,

by the scales – don’t be afraid! – by the scales.

There’s a faded man who bathes in the sea;

He’s so unripe the searchlights ate his gambled away heart.

And a thousand women live in Peru – O insects! – night and day

their nocturnal parades weave together their veins.

A tiny corrosive glove stops me. Enough!

I feel a fleck in my handkerchief 

of the first vein that breaks.

Take care of your feet, my love, your hands!

Since I have to surrender my face,

my face, my face! Oh, my eaten face!

This chaste fire from my desire,

this confusion from longing for balance,

this innocent gunpowder pain in my eyes,

will ease the anguish of another heart

devoured by the nebulae.

The people in shoe stores don't save us,

nor the scenery that turns to music when it finds the rusty keys.

The airs are a lie. Only a crib

in the attic exists

that remembers all things.

And the moon.

But not the moon.

The insects,

the insects alone,

crackling, biting, quivering, clustered,

and the moon

with a glove of smoke that protests in the doorway of her rubble.

The moon!!

New York, January 4, 1930.

------------------------------------------------------------------

Luna y panorama de los insectos (Poema de amor)

La luna en el mar riela,

en la lona gime el viento

y alza en blando movimiento

olas de plata y azul.

- Espronceda                

Mi corazón tendría la forma de un zapato

si cada aldea tuviera una sirena.

Pero la noche es interminable cuando se apoya en los enfermos

y hay barcos que buscan ser mirados para poder hundirse tranquilos.

Si el aire sopla blandamente

mi corazón tiene la forma de una niña.

Si el aire se niega a salir de los cañaverales

mi corazón tiene la forma de una milenaria boñiga de toro.

Bogar, bogar, bogar, bogar,

hacia el batallón de puntas desiguales,

hacia un paisaje de acechos pulverizados.

Noche igual de la nieve, de los sistemas suspendidos.

Y la luna.

¡La luna!

Pero no la luna.

La raposa de las tabernas,

el gallo japonés que se comió los ojos,

las hierbas masticadas.

No nos salvan las solitarias en los vidrios,

ni los herbolarios donde el metafísico

encuentra las otras vertientes del cielo.

Son mentira las formas. Sólo existe

el círculo de bocas del oxígeno.

Y la luna.

Pero no la luna.

Los insectos,

los muertos diminutos por las riberas,

dolor en longitud,

yodo en un punto,

las muchedumbres en el alfiler,

el desnudo que amasa la sangre de todos,

y mi amor que no es un caballo ni una quemadura,

criatura de pecho devorado.

¡Mi amor!

Ya cantan, gritan, gimen: Rostro. ¡Tu rostro! Rostro.

Las manzanas son unas,

las dalias son idénticas,

la luz tiene un sabor de metal acabado

y el campo de todo un lustro cabrá en la mejilla de la moneda.

Pero tu rostro cubre los cielos del banquete.

¡Ya cantan!, ¡gritan!, ¡gimen!,

¡cubren!, ¡trepan!, ¡espantan!

Es necesario caminar, ¡de prisa!, por las ondas, por las ramas,

por las calles deshabitadas de la Edad Media que bajan al río,

por las tiendas de las pieles donde suena un cuerno de vaca herida,

por las escalas, ¡sin miedo!, por las escalas.

Hay un hombre descolorido que se está bañando en el mar;

es tan tierno que los reflectores le comieron jugando el corazón.

Y en el Perú viven mil mujeres, ¡oh insectos!, que noche y día

hacen nocturnos y desfiles entrecruzando sus propias venas.

Un diminuto guante corrosivo me detiene. ¡Basta!

En mi pañuelo he sentido el tris

de la primera vena que se rompe.

Cuida tus pies, amor mío, ¡tus manos!,

ya que yo tengo que entregar mi rostro,

mi rostro, ¡mi rostro!, ¡ay, mi comido rostro!

Este fuego casto para mi deseo,

esta confusión por anhelo de equilibrio,

este inocente dolor de pólvora en mis ojos,

aliviará la angustia de otro corazón

devorado por las nebulosas.

No nos salva la gente de las zapaterías,

ni los paisajes que se hacen música al encontrar las llaves oxidadas.

Son mentira los aires. Sólo existe

una cunita en el desván

que recuerda todas las cosas.

Y la luna.

Pero no la luna.

Los insectos,

los insectos solos,

crepitantes, mordientes, estremecidos, agrupados,

y la luna

con un guante de humo sentada en la puerta de sus derribos.

¡¡La luna!!

New York, 4 de enero de 1930.