issue 31 > poetry > minga

21

                                               My eyes bleed as I gaze at you
                                               as if all that binds us close is a farewell
                                                                             Luis Rosales


You existed when peaches were turning into stars  
and madness was the material used by gnomes
to make a dream
now
there is a skeleton awaiting you
someone who sticks his head out
for a glimpse-
to banish you to petrified stability.

That diligent inhabitant
swimming in your darkness
may deny you all the hours
of your amnesia.



23

Like the dead to their cemetery
like the sound of an accordion
they arrive in a rush
push us around
and turn us into strangers
into children needing to be cured in some body.

They place their birds in the middle of our brains
leaving us with shaking hands as we go out into the street
in which an enemy shouts:
run before death catches you!

They get in without our noticing
and make us look for love in the eyes of those shot dead.


They curl up on the tongue
until they turn to fear
a bed filled with insomnia
a shoe lost on a corner of the street.


They are the journey with its distinctive air
the shadow in the absence of our selves
the dreadful void before the leap.


They are the voices
the voices
the voices of my cave.



34

Nobody wants to carry a dead man
but today someone will have to do it
they'll have to interrupt routine
to kick him
corner him
and throw him in the garbage.

But how did he die?
Nobody knows
no diagnosis can explain the growing putrefaction of the heart.

I who always saw this dead man
walking by himself
looking for something
can assert that he collapsed on the way to his room
to take revenge upon the world
for he was born abandoned by both his blood and shadow
stained with hatred from the womb.

The last look on his face
was a clear sign that he had lived
though everyone threw dirt on him before his death.


Like a desperate dog he loved the street corners
that were always an excuse
to forget his place in time.


He was never too lazy to live
as many claim
all he was was just
and loyal to the sea
that whispered like a demon in his ear:
"give me a body in which to die."

He bothered his few friends
because he was always a future dead man
a dead man by profession.

But from those etceteras that included everything
when he opened his eyes
a newborn stain
he started sketching with his knives the profile of the light.

I recognize this dead man
bring a box one meter sixty eight centimeters long
in which to keep him as something old and without use.

He's cold
he doesn't want to see them any more
and despite their reluctance
they will carry this dead man
wrapped up in my body.






Other translations by Alexis Levitin:

I Don't Know a Thing