and in the winter garden a marble statue
turned in the wind with green movement.
Watery mirrors multiplied worlds
of miniatures, books, deep curtains
with what must have been hermaphrodite flowers.
A strange hallway received visitors
—some had green faces, others blue—
with black purses and feathers and veils,
with nails like cats’ claws and sharp voices,
with daughters who gazed at my hair and shoes
which had no soul, for me sad objects
shut away in secret display cases
since I only liked whatever was poor,
rags, feet as bare as pennies.
My affection flew toward that child
whom indigence adorned with exquisite disarray.
The handsome beggar boy who asked for
sugar, some bread, or a bowl of cold milk.
A thick carpet covered the chairs.
Suffocating yellow wood of the elevator,
up and down it went with its prison of mirrors.
The noise of the street reached us from afar.
I fled from the rooms, from the grand staircase,
from the austere dining room with gold in the dessert bowl,
from the furniture, from the paintings, from proud appearances,
because I only liked the quarters
reserved for the servants.
Installed happily on the top floor
surrounded by bright wood and discarded things
I approached a world of miraculous garments,
the new whiteness of washed clothes and the room
with tiled floor where they waited to be ironed,
the curtainless window sparkling like ice,
I was closer to God there for in the sky
the electric ads from all over the city
cast a burning darkness over the rooftop.
I loved only the bread that tasted like burlap,
sugar from a bag, not from the bowl,
and on perfect afternoons the noise of the ordinary
teacups upon the marble and the houses
that decorated the soup dishes in the kitchen,
and that washbowl with wisteria flowers
where I would furtively wash my hands
and murder my favorite dolls.
Celestial Yellow
(Amarillo celeste, 1972)
In Every Direction
We go leaving ourselves in every direction,
in beds, in rooms, in fields, in seas, in cities,
and each one of those fragments
that is no longer us, keeps being
us as always, making us
jealous and hostile.
“What will it do that I would like to do?”
we think. “Who will it see that I would like to see?”
We often receive chance news
of that creature...
We enter its dreams
when it dreams of us,
loving it
like those whom we love most;
we knock at its doors
with burning hands,
we think it will return in the illusion of belonging to us
mistaken as before
but it will keep being unreachable and treacherous.
As with our rivals we would kill it. We can only
glimpse it in photographs. It must survive us.
Mirrors
No use would it be to cover mirrors
so the people inside don’t get out
having lodged there in expectation
that someone will be reflected
thus enabling them, unnoticed, ominously
or mercifully, to leave the luminous
dwelling where they live,
to attack us or protect us or pervert us.
A heavenly, diabolical court has attended to me
since as far back as I can remember:
when my nanny Celestina buttoned her housecoat
(it’s true she was dyeing her hair
and to surprise her I snuck up beside her reflection)
four dragonflies fluttered out
from where she was reflected
announcing rain, one grazed my cheek;
they followed me constantly, or followed her,
and disappeared upon her death
except before a storm.
When my mother got dressed for the ball
and tied the ribbon on her purple velvet belt
an angel departed with her when she put out the light
and accompanied her to the car
which is why I believe she returned that night
as I trembled with fear for her death.
When the ballet teacher
curtsied in the ebony frame, three masked figures
emerged singing and visited me in a dream.
When the doctor ascending in the elevator
fixed his tie
fifty faces with white bibs,
which I couldn’t examine, furtively emerged
from that scant but brilliant moon.
When Susana said in the café
my hair’s a mess,
she looked at herself in the mirror of her compact,
and unwisely I said, “Let me see,”
leaning into the shiny circle:
a turbulent dialogue startled us,
three youths wearing chains,
mean and skinny, having been
cooped up in a tiny circle,
sat down at our table.
Ever since that day they’ve all interfered
in our telephone calls.
My dog, attentively admiring himself one time,
barked insistently, certain
he had seen a solid body
leaving the mirror: that afternoon
a soft white rabbit visited me.
But I won’t count the cats,
the horses, the gazelles, the tortoises,
the necrophiliacs,
the cannibals, the unborn,
the gnomes, the giants, the onanists,
who came out of the mirrors where I glanced
unwisely while other people didn’t see them
blinded by their own image.
Now I no longer share a mirror with anyone,
for if my reflection sees the chance
to free them, armies of other people,
a world too numerous
will take shape and be difficult to stop
for the mirror will say, “Grow and multiply,”
until it displaces the universe
which is secretly its hope
after repeating those words for so long
in water, in obsidian,
in metals, and in subsequent mirrors.
But we mustn’t think the whole thing is awful.
The displaced will take shelter
inside of mirrors
(having never lived in such luminous places)
they will come out in turn
when those who were reflection
gaze at themselves forgetting their experience.
For an Orchid
Vain orchids, dressed in wire,
adorned by ferns and silver paper
smell of fabric or false humidity
in the windows of florists
that specialize in weddings and funerals
and extravagant loves.
Now that I know them
naked they listen
their petals alert to the piano’s arpeggios
upon dying
they shed one ruby-colored drop of blood
that sparkles, tiny parcel of the Holy Grail,
I love them as if in the depths of my memory
in an artificial forest where I was lost
their colors helped me
find my way back to the path
of intimate natural beauty
to the banks of the enormous Amazon
solitary as your soul, Peter,
sometimes covered in wire and ferns,
like they were when I detested them.
And now that the death of one makes me think
of the others that remain
I cannot imagine a world without orchids
that wasn’t vain.
Vain Warning
Be careful with your imagination.
Wherever it dwells in the world, it follows us constantly
little by little what man or beast, plants or stones
imagined, turns into crude or delicate reality.
The sick with fever, those who shake, those who want to speak but cannot,
in waiting rooms, among pages of newspapers and oranges,
those who gaze at the ceiling or else the sun, wounded,
those who hug each other illicitly, not knowing why,
or in the blue precinct of marriage, those contorted with belly laughs,
the children, the slaves, the unjust, those who go shopping, handle meat,
the prisoners, soldiers, tyrants, with faces of singers,
the swimmers, the eager executioners, those who blaspheme,
those who beg or give, the missionaries, the anarchists,
the submissive, the proud, the solitary, those who don’t understand,
those who work constantly,
those who do nothing and get tired
do nothing some more, without rest, irreducibly, the unborn,
those who carry signs in their fur, letters, drawings,
mysteries that no one has deciphered,
those who wash everything the entire day like raccoons,
those who stink and scavenge for bones or excrement,
tumble around to stink even more,
those who appear spiritual, or musical, or poetic,
those who devour others like them
or themselves from madness,
those who are streaked, with spots, with silver scales and tails,
the ferocious and the domesticated, those who love,
those who eat each other in order to fecundate,
those who live only on grass or precious milk,
or those who need to eat rotten meat,
those who crawl or those most beautiful, with princely feathers,
those whom the water hoards among its glass, clear green or black
in the dark molds of the earth, buried,
those who take so long in dying that they don’t die
and seem like plants or stones, with the additions of time,
those who barely live by a miracle, by suicide, on nothing,
all that they have imagined
and that we mortals imagine
forms the reality of the world.
Farewell
I came to sit at the foot of the stairs
in the house where we used to live,
that house which now is empty.
There is no more furniture, no lamps, it’s true,
no more soap in the bathrooms,
no vinegar or bread in the kitchen.
There are no whimsical homemade objects
that we often talked with about
the loved ones who sat beside us
watching the sunset.
Ah, all the rooftops and palm trees
I saw through these windows, always the same,
the traditional blue cupolas
I saw catching the light from neon signs,
the bold shadow I saw carving
a black angel on the avenue for me,
the noise from traffic and horns,
the political preaching I heard
between tangos and sambas and boleros.
And now in these unending rooms
those people we evoked
have remained—how strange of us!
But not only people: there will be plants,
dogs, a fish that lives for five days,
flowers drinking water in vases,
a golden insect that I trained;
they will often emerge alone,
anxious, each one of these beings,
or they’ll get together on occasions
like this, omnipresent in their strange fiesta.
They must remain without me in these windows
with pictures, pictures, pictures
projected all those days
by glances on the ceiling.
Postcard
I don’t know why I suffer when a season dies,
when the goldfinch goes silent, when frost invades
the enclosures though the hyacinths pulse with life.
But if here it is autumn, in France it is spring.
And so close is that spring it alters my own land.
Through the air comes the pristine memory
of a varied and permanent garden in which I lose myself
among statues and fountains and a murmur of Paris.
In Lezama Park or in Lavalle Plaza
I sense it, and in Boedo on street corners at night,
and even in Palermo when it drizzles and sad
voices hawk fresh drinks along the street.
Only in that garden was my devotion born
first for music, then for painting,
to come at last to literature
where I inflamed with letters a stubborn heart.
A heart like one on a postcard
in satin relief, with cut-out boats,
two hands, forget-me-nots, purple thoughts
united by a fervent elemental love.
Fauré, Debussy, Proust, Racine, Renoir, Ronsard,
who can number all the enchantments!
Those who taught me: the heroes and the saints,
in a book of fables made for singing.
The Crime
Full of walls, angles and prisms,
full of primitive horrors and mirrors
is the heart of the criminal who
leans over his victim as
the murderous hand brandishes
the knife or revolver or poison.
While wind sweeps the cities
and people seek refuge in their houses
he alone is watching over his sin
accompanied by something that calls out,
an animal in his blood
silent, precise, inevitable.
The blue mud if there is mud, the wood
of the floor receding from the foyer
if he’s still inside the house,
everything tells him what he’s going to lose.
Everything tells him what he’s going to find:
the dream his victim dreamed,
that dream he inherits, that nourishes him
and will later serve as his death.
I would like to be your favorite pillow
where you rest your ears at night
to be your secret and the fence
around your sleep; asleep or awake
to be your door, your light when you go away,
someone who does not try to be loved.
To escape the anxiety in my complaints,
and manage at times to be what I am, nothing,
never to be afraid of losing you
through fickleness and unfaithfulness,
nor pointlessly grant to you
the tedious, vulgar faithfulness
of those abandoned who prefer
to die instead of suffer, and do not die.
Dolphins
Dolphins aren’t playing in the waves
as people think.
Dolphins fall asleep as they descend to the ocean floor.
What are they looking for? I don’t know.
When they touch the end of the water
they wake up abruptly
and rise again because the sea is very deep
and when they rise, what are they looking for?
I don’t kno
w.
And they see the sky and it makes them sleepy
and they descend again asleep,
and touch the ocean floor again
and wake up and rise again...
just like our dreams.
A Tiger Speaks
I who move like water
sinuously
like water I know
shameful secrets.
I’ve heard there are dog cemeteries,
with earnest inscriptions
commemorating human friendship,
I’ve heard of horses so stupid
they kneel before their masters,
oxen who are slaves to farmhands,
cats who are ornaments for ladies,
like a hat or a fan,
bears who dance to a tambourine
played by a man or a dwarf woman,
monkeys who flatter their owners,
elephants whom the public debases,
abject seals who gargle
to entertain children,
cows who let themselves be dragged along, mistreated,
who give their milk to anyone,
tamed sheep
who donate their wool
to make clothing or mattresses,
snakes who caress
the heads and necks of madmen.
We never managed to agree
about man’s true nature,
some fools think
perhaps in gratitude
for those who deified us
in other times
that man is a god,
but I and certain of my friends and enemies
think he is edible.
Edible man
is always shy and trembling,
with no claws or hair, or the sparsest of hair;
the man-god distributes food,
I’ve been told, with his hands,
he has a whip in his tongue and his eyes.
In olden days, when he took his stand in the arena,
or the desert, he had a halo
or a magic wand,
a long mane
like a lion’s that gets tangled in the teeth.
All this disturbs me:
sometimes I dream
of a rug whose hide
resembles mine, and I weep
sprawled out on my own skin.
It’s strange. Inconceivable.
But there are stranger things:
Don’t birds exist
who amuse each other singing,
ridiculous doves, and an infinite number of fish
and beetles I know nothing of
but who annoy me?
Isn’t there a poet who thinks of me constantly,
and believes that on my hide are signs revealing
man’s destiny drawn by God
in a poem?
Xerxes’ Plane Tree
Xerxes was marching to Greece with his army
and in Lydia stopped suddenly before a plane tree.
Xerxes contemplated the tree: wounded in its bark, it was perfect.