¿Dónde palpo el fútil
impulso existido
hacia dónde atraviesa
ese aleatorio eco
en campo recordado
dónde amontono cada
parte de sombra
que se arrugó sobre
piel hacia dónde
desaté la luz como bala
que salió del túnel o instinto
dónde estrujo elenguaje
como una cueva inagotable
de ahogos dónde hay ascetas
encadenados a un silencio
quejándose solamente
con un por qué?
in 10,000 years or so
To work and create ‘for nothing’, to sculpture in clay, to know that one’s creation has no future, to see one’s work destroyed in a day while being aware that, fundamentally, this has no more importance than building for centuries – this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions. The Myth of Sisyphus (Albert Camus)
Photographs taken in Statens Museum for Kunst. Copenhagen, Denmark.
Characters:
Pablo
Wife
The Character
The character’s colleague
A café in Copenhagen. 1pm on a Thursday. Pablo sits on a vintage sofa next to his wife. Across them sit a pair of colleagues that discuss, in a profound tone, the “science of marketing”.
[The Character gets up, apologizes to his colleague for taking up two hours of her time. Begins to put on his coat and scarf on.]
Pablo: [addressing his wife] What a character, that guy.
The Character: What did you just say?
Pablo: [impassive] That you’re quite a character.
The Character: What the hell is the problem with you?
Pablo: What? Me? What are you talking about? What do you know about my world, my conception of the world, my inner drama, my subjective constructs? Do you have any idea what I mean by the word ‘character’ and could you have suspected that I see the world as a stage where we are all characters that pretend to be this or that, and some of us are better at it, and some are portraying so bizarrely absurd roles, that they deserve being pointed out and addressed as “one-of-a-kind characters”? I am conscious that saying out loud, “what a character” may connote a derogatory sense to the word. I am aware that we pretend to be immersed in a kind of social nebula, where things appear the same to all members of the community. But I’m sorry to say, that is not the case, we don’t all share the same monotonous perceptual paradigm and I’ll keep calling you and everybody else characters, yes characters in…
[The Character and colleague exit café]
Pablo: … in the absurd drama of the earth.
Don’t be shy
I’ve suckled that nipple
called sky
the universal figure of smoke,
whose body I call yours
and time’s standstill has been glimpsed
in the trunks of blood
that our tongues have enacted
what then is not an instant
but creation that will swell either
like an echo or a myth
don’t pretend like you
don’t understand
this carnivorous cosmology
don’t pretend like your
intelligence was flared and pure
and bubbling like open
lawns of lava
return to me tumultuous
and with gales amongst those
fluttering eyes
and and – and turn
your cold torso
towards the permanence of
the flare
don’t be shy
I’ve conquered without
logic the theory
of your lips
this is the only day left
for us —
to spill
like assassins
the bleeding cup
of night.
Quiero alejarme de la lejanía.
Quiero otra vez vivir
teniendo la capacidad para vivir
estoy convencido de que la desesperanza
aun no me ha convencido que la esperanza
no es posible
pero la espera es espesa pereza
y deja crecer una densa capa de ceniza
¡ya no me da risa!
pasar sentado aunque haya sol y azul
dando patria al destino en sombra y finitud
quiero aprender de memoria
lo que hace la muerte con los recuerdos
y finalmente deshabitar el pueblo de la palabra
para empezar a poblar la habitación del silencio.
les digo que ser poeta
es rabia y desperdiciando
silencios porque ni la
tristeza es reliquia
para el olvido
sí – es dolor en cada
dedo cuando practico atrapar
el fuego con impulso
al huequito del poema
pero en vano
les digo que ser poeta
es mentir
porque me toca tragar
mis penas
y la tinta no traga
mi amarga luz
no hay persona alguna
con llave y sin verbo
haciendo ternura
la llaga del alma
les digo ser poeta
es torcer cantos
abriéndose colochos de humo
pero ser poeta
no ha ni mojado
ni dado estrella
a mi cueva seca del corazón.
Burning—the stars are burning.
Rows and rows of flame where we row
arrows were descending like hot petals of fire.
A muscle swells and the voice
speaks between curtains of blaze.
The fire is in the world
and every instant is its fuel.
Staring, standing, seeking
with star-studded pupils
one word is spoken: fire
fire that burns all the pinnacles,
the sacrifice, the holocaust of sacrificing
love, the historicity of the encounter.
Escape woman, hold on to my wings
as embers consumed in this climate
of fire.
The stars — are burning.
Like everything else
we’ve touched, sensed
and desired in the charred medium.
Even the lines of our silhouettes
are wriggling as coils of screeching oils.
Your lips will say it,
when a starving spark devours
those tiny lengths of brief candlewick,
your lips will say it
over and over again
until I will think of nothing else:
Burning—the stars are burning.
¿Que sería nunca despertar?
Entre la desnudez de un suspiro
nunca haber crecido como
tramos de nube hacia una manifestación
,debe ser una tentación
haber dibujado ilusos sustentos
con una infusión de horas
y cuando despierto,
con los brazos torcidos y los
dedos arropados con el primer
segundo de luz,
qué sería ser la delicia
de un invisible adiós
que se despegó de los párpados
del dios que nunca quiso despertar.
I am going to die.
But there are days
when flesh titillates
and joins the circus
of the sinews
and there’s ecstasy
in the flesh
as if it were loaves
of bread soaked
in froths of bliss
and the moment’s trapeze
is a vehicle or an aspect
of levitation
and neighbors witness
a whiff of shadow
swirling in dimly lit
orbit
and forget noon
dawn or wood
head or heart
being here
in physical perpetuity
in whirlpools of hairs
and hairs and hairs
and bones
veering
towards a dizzy
orchestration
until I become
a mote of sound
that has permeated
the intermediary air.
Beyond Language 
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