obscuring summer suns.
Ah, how often did I listen in my grief
to the heart of the tree answering me.
In its uncommon fragrance of an armoire,
how well it keeps the memory. See my hands:
the nervatures in their palms
imitate the harmonic designs
that are not just an ornament of the leaves
but keys from mysterious gods.
I remember the morning dew
—a meticulous love tells them apart—
the golden dew of autumn and the blue
of winter in the birch flowers.
In every burning dewdrop
I see various birds in gardens:
each drop as different as the skies.
Trees, were we at some point
trees ourselves, and you men,
or do I alone suffer this metamorphosis
among the tall demolished shadows
with hands, leaves linked together?
Dialogues of the Silence
In the many secret catalogues
of time, where will those
long and lucid dialogues be found
that I imagined having with those I loved,
with those who so often waited for me
and following the rites of absence,
bearing me sorrow or joy, answered
my desire and never my conscience.
Where was my present voice,
in space, in its uncertain dwelling
(that sleep like subterranean water
crosses with light in the deserted darkness)?
As with the black statue of Memnon
that emitted real harmonies,
through what ages of evasion will it echo
in the company of foreign voices?
With their constant illustrations
of forests and people and mansions
preserved between dazzling pages,
where are those apocryphal conversations
pronounced by no one?
Do they exist on the wings of the winds,
in the cruel bond of glances,
in the memories of the firmaments?
Do they exist with their labyrinths and loves
like half-ruined houses
that carry the memory’s colors
in lost or broken floor tiles?
Where is the intricate manuscript
with its trembling hand in space
that the night seems to have written
so slowly, following thoughts!
I think it is somewhere and I sense
that it transforms the trees, the roses,
the doubts of pain, thought,
lies, love, all things;
that it will not let me die in peace
ignoring the magnificent ceiling
or the splendor of the sun, pink and lilac,
over the long clouds at sunset
forming now another universe in time;
I glimpse it at night, terrified,
as in a deep mirror which on the back preserves
another truth, the one that is imagined.
The Names
(Los nombres, 1953)
Scales
How many times, oh how many, how many times
did my hands repeat movements,
did I move my fingers in the same way
to say goodbye, to call,
or did I walk over the same stones,
like the tiger caged between the walls
of a garden where people come to visit,
where there are islands and bridges and photographers;
how many times, inescapably,
with turpentine or green paint
did I try to give color to those clusters
mentioned in the books of the Bible,
trying to forget violet vines
that I have ritually remembered
and with a black pencil, eyes closed
drawing a face
did I want to avoid the shape of the lips
that I drew with open eyes;
how many times did I hear the same music
(in the gray kerosene lamp
or in the water from the faucet drop by drop
when the silence is quite perfect)
that I did not write because I cannot write music;
how many times, oh too many times
trying to avoid certain verses,
and words that I’ve so worn out,
did they return to my lips without relief
like a persistent fearful prayer
returns to the mouth of children,
like the rains and north winds return
or the light or the snake to its spot;
all the times I dreamed in my life
of mysterious obsidian stones
that could scratch me like glass
violet, green, blue, red, yellow,
and streaking me in light change me
with a modern sealike transparency
that would give my brush other clusters,
other illuminated quadrangles,
another face, other faces, other lips
drawn by my amazing hand,
another precise intrepid music,
other different phrases, other names,
to repeat again once more
what I will never repeat enough,
always the same that will be different.
The Vision
for J. L. B.
We were walking far from the night,
quoting verses at random,
not too far from the sea.
Now and then we passed a car.
There was a eucalyptus, a dark pine
and the tracks of a wagon
where the cement turned to mud.
Now and then we passed a wall.
We were going nowhere, of course,
and we were lost: it didn’t matter.
The street led us
to a black horse that was almost dead.
It was at night—this must be a lie.
Perhaps, but in my verses it’s true—.
A secret deity
almost always nocturnal, who watches us,
saw that we were stopping and the day
suspended its fanatic honors,
closed up its colors
as the horse saw us too.
Don’t say that’s not certain: he was watching us.
With the astonished stone of his eyes,
under the red stars,
he saw us as the gods he was expecting.
The Mosaics
for M. C. B.
If tears wore their pain inscribed,
you would see I don’t cry as much as it seems;
if stones, etched glass, were in my weeping
you would see the favor they do me by flowing,
perfect and copious.
Believe me, they would show you that suffering offers us
places and people and objects far away;
that the panic darkness quivering in their reflections
is passable and clear,
like the illusion inside of mirrors.
We saw similar figures in mosaics:
the Minotaur, Orpheus, the virgins in mourning,
Abraham’s sacrifices, Venus, the asphodel,
the most archaic faces
of Daniel with the lions, on the wall, in the ground.
Apocryphal Immobility
In my immobility there are five tigers;
incessantly they move ahead and fall back,
they wait for me and follow me and wait for me
like the desert sands.
The tigers know I have eight lives.
They know there is no quietude in my quietude:
the towers tremble and my face shines.
Identical, identical are all
those images broken by water,
that whirl continuously at my feet
and endure in its blue memory.
In my immobility there are four snakes,
they writhe, eye each other, and coil,
they feed on lilies and dung
hissing among the branches of the forests.
They’re gray, and red, and violet.
In my immobility there are eight kings,
they have a golden robe and red braids,
they lie down and fall asleep beneath a tree;
when their sabers glisten, they rise,
I wake up and am finished off by their gaze.
In my immobility there are seven bridges:
those with statues sway back and forth,
those that are all black and wooden
carry me in shadow to another city.
In my immobility there are nine phrases,
their golden flowers are all open
and their gardens are Greek gardens
where the labyrinths lead me
to a resonant beach at twilight.
In my immobility there are ten violins
whose strings move away in the night
stirring the blue water of a sad lake.
In my immobility there are mud and thistles,
fires that will never go out,
a rosebush, a sphinx at the foot of a pine tree,
flies, ants talking in the air.
In my immobility there are many people,
they enter and exit the rooms and talk
through masks carried from hell.
The Infinite Life
Sometimes I wonder, listening
like a memory now to the thrush sing
in the most pliant depths of sleep,
what does life pursue in its design
and what will we become when nothing
distinguishes us from the air and the surge
of the sea that washes the shores of the land
where we are born and something casts us out.
When superstitious Atropos arrives
with her black butterfly face,
will we possess the magic golden ring
to protect us from a tragic fate?
Or will we have the wings, the horse
that passes like a beam of light through glass?
Or will we lose everything in an instant
with the brief and secret training
that indistinct things now give us?
We will not write in the same ink.
Alexander Nevsky will not get by
merely with music, armor, and protocol
in the dark movie houses.
The long, long walls will not exist
in the distant empire of China;
nor in Tibet the monks, their doctrine.
Neither shadows nor the open sea will exist,
not mountains nor archipelagos,
not those golden busts, nor those names,
nor that voice of men revered by the people.
There will be no tigers nor monsters of cement,
nor the proclamation of the monument.
There will be no theaters and crowds and markets,
flowering agapanthus, secluded places,
where the heat with its cicadas sings
or the rain on roofs of slate.
We will not know that Egypt exists or the Nile,
nor will we read the pages of Aeschylus.
We will not see in certain eyes souls
that kiss our own within our palms.
In the itinerary of the days,
victims sometimes of witchcraft,
we will not leave out what we love most
to then include what we detest.
The lustrous Mediterranean will not exist,
nor the plants, nor today’s sun.
There will be no streets with predictable names,
no more sentient stones or metals.
It will not be the same river over the mud,
the burning of trash nor the cart,
the dogs in the suburban nights that
lose their way beside a cruel blond boy.
There will be no queens of Egypt, nor coins
preserving their likeness, nor will there be silks.
If today we exist, in order not to die
tomorrow we will manage not to be exempted
from the universe by inventing a world
in order to live again. Roving
like us our thoughts, perhaps,
will recall a certain food,
an ache, a stigma, a passion,
a pale face, communion,
and for example in some lines
by St. John of the Cross a stag, a stark north wind,
to include us once more in history.
Will memory be like a cage?
The open sesame of remembering
will set us in our place again
or in different places like blind people
who don’t recognize each other, as in a game.
Sonnets in the Lines of a Hand
I
I want to die if from my life I don’t find
the goal of the mystery that guides me,
I want to die, to go blind and cold
as the plant struck by lightning.
If what I yearn to say is what I hush,
and if I must loathe what I loved
without shame or disgust until this day,
if everything I try is mere attempt,
it will be because I have lived from lies.
For not dying I want to die. The wind
echoing between the walls with its lyres
or the russet hibiscus, or the fragment
of the moon, always something, even my complaint,
dazzles me and leaves me more perplexed.
II
If truth becomes a lie,
if wicked fortune turns to pain,
if sorrow with its false promises
turns to joy when it expires,
if virtue, which my life aspires to
in vain, thwarts the habitual promise,
if my heart is heavy from hate or love
and freezing like marble, still sighs.
If I couldn’t set myself right on seeing
the ingratitude of those whom I loved most,
from my affection those who pleased me,
it will be because the gods have injured me
with the innocent horror of having been born.
III
What angel will deliver you from sorrow
and awaken you one lovely day
with no memory of what afflicted you
and say into your ear: “Listen and stop
your weeping. In my arms you are not weighed down
by the slowness of time nor the pitiless
betrayal of men. You are mine,
no longer a prisoner of this vain world.
Lean out this shining window
decorated by your joy. Already pain
has withered like a tall flower
whose wisdom finally cures you
upon dissolving and turning
into dust, into illusion, into other fortune.”
The Dog Okinamaro
for Sei Shōnagon
(who lived in the tenth century)
He who strolled about one day crowned
with peach and cherry blossoms,
sad Okinamaro was banished
as a prisoner to the island of dogs.
When he returned to the dark palace, wounded,
you called to him, but he did not look at you,
and no one, no one recognized him,
but it was he himself, himself dispossessed.
And you recognized him the moment
he wept at your feet and you saw him
disfigured, dirty, swollen and sad,
and you wept with him in his grief.
The Bitter for the Sweet
(Lo amargo por d
ulce, 1962)
Act of Contrition
I have so much repentance in me,
so many useless presentiments,
a dog’s blind loyalty,
a heart that can be of iron
unmoved sometimes even by death,
or joy, or good luck.
If I have a heart, then let it burn!
I have not thanked the guardian angel
who is right beside me nights and days,
shining as in a decal.
I have sinned by faults of omission
and still more by unusual obsession.
What’s happening to me, must happen a thousand times
before time and after, even more.
The primordial acts didn’t count
for me, except when they went away,
like the sharply etched cypresses,
the pinecones that look like fish,
the river gleaming as if made of mica
in my memory which multiplies them.
I have scorned what now I prize—
boredom’s secrets, every hour,
the monotony’s diversion,
and that varied bedazzlement
of the years left over and missing
in the clock’s leaping hands.
I was and I am the spectator of myself;
what enters me changes as in a prism.
The spectator I am distressed
by evil in a fairy costume,
the devil disguised as a saintly
carnival boy full of suffering.
She who trembles afraid to suffer,
who yearns to die from love of life;
she who cries for herself at others’ grief,
who says only “I” in saying “we.”
I think: smoke and foliage look alike,
but only the leaves come back to life.
Of evil and good, shall I say the same?
No. Evil comes back to life in the abyss.
Inside a pale kaleidoscope
at times as fascinating as opium
disparate sentiments reside in me;
thus Satan faithlessly changes places.
There is light, there are roses, and there is garbage
and revulsion in the purest ambition,
as there is happiness in my pain
and in my joy always something terrifying.
So many windows the world holds open,
so many doors, mirrors, dead people,
as my innocence holds remorse,
or my unusual wickedness, conscience.
Why with unbandaged eyes
did I advance along the interminable path
of sin that spirals
away lucidity with so much harm
to enter the squalid building
poor and monotonous from the curse!
Why did I undress facing the balcony
if the sun doesn’t enter the heart entirely!