Chasing an unnamable dream,
Unclassifiable, the dream of our youth,
Which is to say the bravest of all
Our dreams. And put that way
How could I deny myself a ride on that fast black
Northern bike, breaking out on those roads
Long ago traveled by Mexican saints,
Mendicant Mexican poets,
Taciturn leeches from Tepito
Or Colonia Guerrero, all on the same path,
Where times are mixed up and confused
Verbal and physical, yesterday and aphasia.
And sometimes I dream that Mario Santiago
Comes looking for me, or it’s a faceless poet,
A head without eyes or mouth or nose,
Only skin and volition, and without asking questions
I get on the bike and we take off
On the northern roads, the head and I,
Strange crewmembers embarking on
A miserable route, roads erased by dust and rain,
Land of flies and little lizards, dried brush
And blizzards of sand, the only imaginable stage
For our poetry.
And sometimes I dream that the road
Our bike or our longing is traveling
Doesn’t begin in my dream, but in the dreams
Of others: the innocent, the blessed,
The meek, those who, unfortunately for us,
Are no longer here. And with that Mario Santiago and I
Leave Mexico City, which is the extension
Of so many dreams, the materialization of so many
Nightmares, and retake our positions
Always headed north, always on the road
Of coyotes, and then our bike
Is the color of night. Our bike
Is a black donkey dawdling
Through lands of Curiosity. A black donkey
Moving through the humanity and geometry
Of these poor desolate landscapes.
And Mario’s laugh or the head’s
Greets the ghosts of our youth,
The unnameable and useless dream
Of courage.
And sometimes I think I see a black bike
Like a donkey disappearing down the dirt
Roads of Zacatecas and Coahuila, on the outer limits
Of the dream, and without quite knowing
Its meaning, its ultimate significance,
I still understand its music:
A cheerful farewell song.
And maybe they’re gestures of courage, saying
Adios, without resentment or bitterness,
At peace with their total futility and with us ourselves.
They’re the little acts of defiance that are useless — or that
Years and custom made us think useless — waving hello,
Making enigmatic signals to us with their hands
In the middle of the night, on one side of the road,
Like our beloved and abandoned children,
Raised alone in these calcareous deserts,
Like the radiance that one day stood in our path
And that we’d forgotten.
And sometimes I dream that Mario arrives
With his black bike in the middle of a nightmare
And we take off bound for the north,
Bound for ghost towns where
Little lizards and flies live.
And while the dream takes me
From one continent to another
Through a shower of cold, painless stars,
I see the black bike, like a donkey from another planet,
Split the lands of Coahuila in two.
A donkey from another planet
That is the unrestrained longing of our ignorance,
But that is also our hope
And our courage.
An unnameable and useless courage, for sure,
But re-encountered in the margins
Of the most remote dream,
In the partitions of the final dream,
In the confusing and magnetic trail
Of donkeys and poets.
HE VUELTO A VER A MI PADRE
para León Bolaño
La historia comienza con la llegada del sexto enfermo,
un tipo de más de sesenta, solo, de enormes patillas,
con una radio portátil y una o dos novelas de aquellas
que escribía Lafuente Estefanía.
Los cinco que ya estábamos en la habitación éramos amigos,
es decir nos hacíamos bromas y conocíamos
los síntomas verdaderos de la muerte,
aunque ahora ya no estoy tan seguro.
El sexto, mi padre, llegó silenciosamente
y durante todo el tiempo que estuvo en nuestra habitación
casi no habló con nadie.
Sin embargo una noche, cuando uno de los enfermos se moría
(Rafael, el de la cama n.º 4)
fue él quien se levantó y llamó a las enfermeras.
Nosotros estábamos paralizados de miedo.
Y mi padre obligó a las enfermeras a venir y salvó al enfermo
de la cama n.º 4
y luego volvió a quedarse dormido
sin darle ninguna importancia.
A Rafael lo mandaron a morir a su casa y a otros dos
los dieron de alta.
Y a mi padre hoy lo volví a ver.
Como yo, sigue en el hospital.
Lee su novela de vaqueros y cojea de la pierna izquierda.
Su rostro está terriblemente arrugado.
Aún lo acompaña la radio portátil de color rojo.
Tose un poco más que antes y no le da mucha importancia a las cosas.
Hoy hemos estado juntos en la salita, él con su novela
y yo con un libro de William Blake.
Afuera atardecía lentamente y los coches fluían como pesadillas.
Yo pensaba y pensaba en mi padre, una y otra vez,
hasta que éste se levantó, dijo algo
con su voz aguardentosa
que no entendí
y encendió la luz.
Eso fue todo. Él encendió la luz y volvió a la lectura.
Praderas interminables y vaqueros de corazones fieles.
Afuera, sobre el Monte Carmelo, pendía la luna llena.
I SAW MY FATHER AGAIN
for León Bolaño
The story begins with the arrival of the sixth patient,
a guy over sixty, alone, sporting huge sideburns,
with a portable radio and one or two of those
Lafuente Estefanía type novels.
The five of us already in the room were friends,
which is to say we joked around and knew about
death’s real symptoms,
though now I’m not so sure.
The sixth, my father, arrived silently
and the whole time he was in our room
he hardly spoke to anyone.
Nevertheless one night, when one of the patients was dying
(Rafael, from bed #4)
he was the one who got up and called the nurses.
We were paralyzed with fear.
And my father made the nurses come and saved the patient
in bed #4
and then went back to sleep
without giving it a second thought.
Afterwards, I don’t know why, they put him in a different room.
They sent Rafael to die at home and
discharged two others.
And today I saw my father again.
Like me, he’s still in the hospital.
He reads his cowboy novel and limps on his left leg.
His face is terribly wrinkled.
He still carries the red colored portable radio.
He coughs a little more than before and doesn’t put much stock in things.
Today we were together in the ward, he with his novel
and I with a book by William Blake.
Outside night was slowly falling and the cars flowed like nightmares.
I was thinking and thinking about my father, over and over,
until he stood up, said something
with his raspy voice
that I didn’t understand
and turned on the light.
That was all. He turned on the light and went back to reading.
Endless prairies and cowboys with loyal hearts.
Outside, over Monte Carmelo, the moon hung full.
LOS BLUES TAOÍSTAS
DEL HOSPITAL VALLE HEBRÓN
1
Crecí junto a jóvenes duros.
Duros y sensibles a los grandes espacios desolados.
Amaneceres de cristal en América, lejos. ¿Sabes
Lo que quiero decir? Esos amaneceres sin hospitales, a vida o muerte,
En casuchas de adobe azotadas por el viento,
Cuando la muerte abrió la puerta de lata y asomó su sonrisa:
Una sonrisa de pobre
Que jamás –lo supimos de golpe– comprenderíamos.
Una sonrisa atroz en donde de alguna manera se resumían
Nuestros esfuerzos y nuestros desafíos tal vez inútiles.
Y vimos nuestras muertes reflejadas
En la sonrisa de aquella muerte
Que abrió la puerta de lata de la casucha de adobes
E intentó fundirse con nosotros.
2
Estabas tú junto a nosotros.
Y tú no te moviste
Cuando emprendimos la marcha.
Te quedaste en la casucha de adobe
Y no vimos tus lágrimas, oh hermana.
Meruit habere redemptorem.
Meruit tam sacra membra tangere.
Digna tam sacra membra tangere.
3
Y resueltos salimos de nuestros agujeros.
De nuestros cálidos nidos.
Y habitamos el huracán.
Ahora todos muertos.
También los que recordaron
Un amanecer de cristal
En el territorio de la Quimera y del Mito.
4
Así, tú y yo nos convertimos
En sabuesos de nuestra propia memoria.
Y recorrimos, como detectives latinoamericanos,
Las calles polvorientas del continente
Buscando al asesino.
Pero sólo encontramos
Vitrinas vacías, manifestaciones equívocas
De la verdad.
5
En los territorios de la Quimera
Volveré a encontrarte.
Y te daré diez besos
Y luego
Diez más.
THE TAOIST BLUES
OF VALLE HEBRÓN HOSPITAL
1
I grew up with tough kids.
Tough and sensitive to great desolate spaces.
Crystalline dawns in America, far away. You know
What I mean? Those life-or-death dawns without hospitals,
In adobe shacks lashed by wind,
When Death opened the tin door and flashed her smile:
A poor person’s smile
That we would never — it dawned on us — understand.
A terrible smile which summed up, in a way,
Our potentially useless efforts and defiance.
And we saw our deaths reflected
In the smile of that Death
Who opened the tin door of the adobe shack
And tried to join us.
2
You were there with us.
And you didn’t move
When we took off.
You stayed in the adobe shack
And we didn’t see your tears, oh sister.
Meruit habere redemptorem.
Meruit tam sacra membra tangere.
Digna tam sacra membra tangere.
3
And, determined, we left our holes.
Our warm nests.
And occupied the hurricane.
All dead now.
Those, too, who remembered
A crystalline dawn
In the land of Chimera and Myth.
4
That’s how you and I became
Sleuths of our own memory.
And traveled, like Latin American detectives,
Over the dusty streets of the continent
Looking for the assassin.
But we only found
Empty shop windows, ambiguous manifestations
Of truth.
5
In the lands of the Chimera
I’ll meet you again.
And I’ll give you ten kisses
And then
Ten more.
LAS ENFERMERAS
Una estela de enfermeras emprenden el regreso a casa. Protegido
por mis polaroid las observo ir y volver.
Ellas están protegidas por el crepúsculo.
Una estela de enfermeras y una estela de alacranes.
Van y vienen.
¿A las siete de la tarde? ¿A las ocho
de la tarde?
A veces alguna levanta la mano y me saluda. Luego alcanza
su coche, sin volverse, y desaparece
protegida por el crepúsculo como yo por mis polaroid.
Entre ambas indefensiones está el jarrón de Poe.
El florero sin fondo que contiene todos los crepúsculos,
todos los lentes negros, todos
los hospitales.
THE NURSES
A trail of nurses start heading home. Protected
by my sunglasses I watch them come and go.
They’re protected by the sunset.
A trail of nurses and a trail of scorpions.
Come and go.
At six in the evening? At eight
in the evening?
Sometimes one lifts a hand and waves to me. Then reaches
her car, without turning back, and disappears,
protected by the sunset as I am by my shades.
Between both vulnerabilities sits Poe’s urn.
The bottomless vase holding all sunsets,
all dark lenses, all
hospitals.
EL FANTASMA DE EDNA LIEBERMAN
Te visitan en la hora más oscura
todos tus amores perdidos.
El camino de tierra que conducía al manicomio
se despliega otra vez como los ojos
de Edna Lieberman,
como sólo podían sus ojos
elevarse por encima de las ciudades,
y brillar.
Y brillan nuevamente para ti
los ojos de Edna
detrás del aro de fuego
que antes era el camino de tierra,
la senda que recorriste de noche,
ida y vuelta,
una y otra vez,
buscándola o acaso
buscando tu sombra.
Y despiertas silenciosamente
y los ojos de Edna
están allí.
Entre la luna y el aro de fuego,
leyendo a sus poetas mexicanos
favoritos.
¿Y a Gilberto Owen,
lo has leído?,
dicen tus labios sin sonido,
dice tu respiración
y tu sangre que circula
como la luz de un faro.
Pero son sus ojos el faro
que atraviesa tu silencio.
Sus ojos que son como el libro
de geografía ideal:
los mapas de la pesadilla pura.
Y tu sangre ilumina
los estantes con libros, las sillas
con libros, el suelo
lleno de libros apilados.
Pero los ojos de Edna
sólo te buscan a ti.
Sus ojos son el libro
más buscado.
Demasiado tarde
lo has entendido, pero
no importa.
En el sueño vuelves
a estrechar sus manos,
y ya no pides nada.
THE GHOST OF EDNA LIEBERMAN
They visit you in the darkest hour,
all of your lost loves.
The dirt path that led to the madhouse
unfolds itself again like the eyes
of Edna Lieberman,
as only her eyes could
rise over the tops of cities
and shine.
And they shine once more for you,
Edna’s eyes,
behind the ring of fire
that used to be the dirt path,
the trail you traveled by night,
round trip,
again and again,
looking for her or maybe
looking for your shadow.
And you wake up silently
and Edna’s eyes
are there.
Between the moon and the ring of fire,
reading her favorite
Mexican poets.
And Gilberto Owen?
Have you read him?
say your lips without sound,
says your breath
and your blood that circulates
like the beam of a lighthouse.
But her eyes are the lighthouse
piercing your silence.
Her eyes like the ideal
geography book:
maps of pure nightmare.
And your blood lights up
the shelves stacked with books, the chairs
stacked with books, the floor
covered with piled-up books.
But Edna’s eyes
are fixed on you.
Her eyes are the most
sought-after book.
You’ve understood it
too late, but
that’s okay.
In the dream you go back
to shaking her hands
and no longer ask for anything.
EL REY DE LOS PARQUES
¿Qué hace un tipo como tú en este lugar?
¿Planeas un crimen?
¿Pasó por tu cabeza la idea de entrar en aquella casa
silenciosamente, forzando una ventana
o por la puerta de la cocina?
Ya no eres el rey de los parques y jardines,
tu rostro está en los archivos de la policía
y con sólo apretar un botón la computadora escupe
una fotografía tuya de frente
y de perfil.
Ya no eres el rey de los parques, escúchame, un botón
y caes entre los dientes de la máquina, tu jeta
en la retina de todos, sargentos de la brigada criminal
y forenses, enfermeros y fotógrafos, peritos de la
policía científica y espaldas cuadradas que vigilan