— Hafiz (via rebuildourcities)
(Fuente: holdfast1, vía rebuildourcities)
1. La cogida y la muerte
A las cinco de la tarde.
Eran las cinco en punto de la tarde.
Un niño trajo la blanca sábana
a las cinco de la tarde.
Una espuerta de cal ya prevenida
a las cinco de la tarde.
Lo demás era muerte y solo muerte
a las cinco de la tarde.
El viento se llevó los algodones
a las cinco de la tarde.
Y el óxido sembró cristal y níquel
a las cinco de la tarde.
Ya luchan la paloma y el leopardo
a las cinco de la tarde.
Y un muslo con un asta desolada
a las cinco de la tarde.
Comenzaron los sones del bordón
a las cinco de la tarde.
Las campanas de arsénico y el humo
a las cinco de la tarde.
En las esquinas grupos de silencio
a las cinco de la tarde.
¡Y el toro solo corazón arriba!
a las cinco de la tarde.
Cuando el sudor de nieve fue llegando
a las cinco de la tarde,
cuando la plaza se cubrió de yodo
a las cinco de la tarde,
la muerte puso huevos en la herida
a las cinco de la tarde.
A las cinco de la tarde.
A las cinco en punto de la tarde.Un ataúd con ruedas es la cama
a las cinco de la tarde.
Huesos y flautas suenan en su oído
a las cinco de la tarde.
El toro ya mugía por su frente
a las cinco de la tarde.
El cuarto se irisaba de agonía
a las cinco de la tarde.
A lo lejos ya viene la gangrena
a las cinco de la tarde.
Trompa de lirio por las verdes ingles
a las cinco de la tarde.
Las heridas quemaban como soles
a las cinco de la tarde,
y el gentío rompía las ventanas
a las cinco de la tarde.
A las cinco de la tarde.
¡Ay qué terribles cinco de la tarde!
¡Eran las cinco en todos los relojes!
¡Eran las cinco en sombra de la tarde!
I said to my soul, be still, and let the dark come upon you
Which shall be the darkness of God. As, in a theatre,
The lights are extinguished, for the scene to be changed
With a hollow rumble of wings, with a movement of darkness on darkness,
And we know that the hills and the trees, the distant panorama
And the bold imposing facade are all being rolled away—
Or as, when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations
And the conversation rises and slowly fades into silence
And you see behind every face the mental emptiness deepen
Leaving only the growing terror of nothing to think about;
Or when, under ether, the mind is conscious but conscious of nothing—
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.T. S. Eliot
from “East Coker,” The Four Quartets
Is it the Garcia Lorca kind
faithful as a cricket’s
tune about a boy fishing
in a pool of rainwater
for his lost voice
praying it’ll sing back
so he can wear it
on his finger again
like a wedding ring?
Maybe it’s the anti-parakeet
Nicanor Parra kind
remorseful as a memoir
that survived four wars
half a dozen sexually
transmitted depressions
insomnia-
inspired hallucinations
and a dedication to
its remaining readers
last count forty-five
asking them to burn each page
upon reading memories
it had tried to capture
unless it’s the Paz kind
not Paz-be-with-you of olden
days difficult now
to digest Paz or any Zense
of peace without Belano or Bolaño
pearly-gate-crashing in an Impala
slingshooting saints out
of their poses harping
on angels reciting bad poetry
aloud anything to disturb
the last of the angry gods’
siesta atop a mountain of ashes
once rich without meaning.
— R. Zamora Linmark, “On Silence” (via rebuildourcities)
As I Walked Out One Evening by W. H. Auden, read by Tom Hiddleston
As I walked out one evening,Walking down Bristol Street,The crowds upon the pavementWere fields of harvest wheat.And down by the brimming riverI heard a lover singUnder an arch of the railway:“Love has no ending.“I’ll love you, dear, I’ll love youTill China and Africa meet,And the river jumps over the mountainAnd the salmon sing in the street,“I’ll love you till the oceanIs folded and hung up to dryAnd the seven stars go squawkingLike geese about the sky.“The years shall run like rabbits,For in my arms I holdThe Flower of the Ages,And the first love of the world.”But all the clocks in the cityBegan to whirr and chime:“O let not Time deceive you,You cannot conquer Time.“In the burrows of the NightmareWhere Justice naked is,Time watches from the shadowAnd coughs when you would kiss.“In headaches and in worryVaguely life leaks away,And Time will have his fancyTo-morrow or to-day.“Into many a green valleyDrifts the appalling snow;Time breaks the threaded dancesAnd the diver’s brilliant bow.“O plunge your hands in water,Plunge them in up to the wrist;Stare, stare in the basinAnd wonder what you’ve missed.“The glacier knocks in the cupboard,The desert sighs in the bed,And the crack in the tea-cup opensA lane to the land of the dead.“Where the beggars raffle the banknotesAnd the Giant is enchanting to Jack,And the Lily-white Boy is a Roarer,And Jill goes down on her back.“O look, look in the mirror,O look in your distress;Life remains a blessingAlthough you cannot bless.“O stand, stand at the windowAs the tears scald and start;You shall love your crooked nelghbourWith your crooked heart.”It was late, late in the evening,The lovers they were gone;The clocks had ceased their chiming,And the deep river ran on.
(Fuente: lazyocean, vía rebuildourcities)
(my English translation below the jump)
Sucede que me canso de ser hombre.
Sucede que entro en las sastrerías y en los cines
marchito, impenetrable, como un cisne de fieltro
Navegando en un agua de origen y ceniza.El olor de las peluquerías me hace llorar a gritos.
Sólo quiero un descanso de piedras o de lana,
sólo quiero no ver establecimientos ni jardines,
ni mercaderías, ni anteojos, ni ascensores.Sucede que me canso de mis pies y mis uñas
y mi pelo y mi sombra.
Sucede que me canso de ser hombre.Sin embargo sería delicioso
asustar a un notario con un lirio cortado
o dar muerte a una monja con un golpe de oreja.
Sería bello
ir por las calles con un cuchillo verde
y dando gritos hasta morir de frío.No quiero seguir siendo raíz en las tinieblas,
vacilante, extendido, tiritando de sueño,
hacia abajo, en las tapias mojadas de la tierra,
absorbiendo y pensando, comiendo cada día.No quiero para mí tantas desgracias.
No quiero continuar de raíz y de tumba,
de subterráneo solo, de bodega con muertos
ateridos, muriéndome de pena.Por eso el día lunes arde como el petróleo
cuando me ve llegar con mi cara de cárcel,
y aúlla en su transcurso como una rueda herida,
y da pasos de sangre caliente hacia la noche.Y me empuja a ciertos rincones, a ciertas casas húmedas,
a hospitales donde los huesos salen por la ventana,
a ciertas zapaterías con olor a vinagre,
a calles espantosas como grietas.Hay pájaros de color de azufre y horribles intestinos
colgando de las puertas de las casas que odio,
hay dentaduras olvidadas en una cafetera,
hay espejos
que debieran haber llorado de vergüenza y espanto,
hay paraguas en todas partes, y venenos, y ombligos.
Yo paseo con calma, con ojos, con zapatos,
con furia, con olvido,
paso, cruzo oficinas y tiendas de ortopedia,
y patios donde hay ropas colgadas de un alambre:
calzoncillos, toallas y camisas que lloran
lentas lágrimas sucias.
We have been telling the story wrong all along,
how a king took Philomela’s tongue after he had taken
her body, and how the gods turned her into a nightingale
so she could tell the night of her grief. Even now the streets
wait for her lamentation—strays minister to bones abandoned
on a stoop, a man sleeps on the ghosts of yesterday’s heat,
pigeons rest on top of the church and will not stir until
they hear music below them. Inside, a woman warms up
the organ and sings Via Dolorosa about a Messiah
who wanted to save everyone from the wages of pleasure.
But how can I keep a man’s fingers from my mouth?
How can I resist bare trees dervishing on the sidewalk?
A woman outside the train station asks, Is there a city
underneath this city? I say, Let me tell you a story,
and tell her that after Longfellow put out the fire
in his wife’s dress, after he buried her, after his burns
turned to soft pink skin, he translated the Inferno.
There is a place deep in the earth for the ravished
and ruined where everyone is transformed by suffering.
And the truth is that Philomela originally became
a sparrow stuttering in the laurels, but the story
changed with the telling. Someone wanted to give her
mercy, a song. Now the truth is a red stain on her breast.
Now truth is the pulse where her tongue used to be.
— Traci Brimhall, “Via Dolorosa” (via rebuildourcities)
We crawl through the tall grass and idle light,
our chests against the earth so we can hear the river
underground. Our backs carry rotting wood and books
that hold no stories of damnation or miracles.
One day as we listen for water, we find a beekeeper—
one eye pearled by a cataract, the other cut out by his own hand
so he might know both types of blindness. When we stand
in front of him, he says we are prisms breaking light into color—
our right shoulders red, our left hips a wavering indigo.
His apiaries are empty except for dead queens, and he sits
on his quiet boxes humming as he licks honey from the bodies
of drones. He tells me he smelled my southern skin for miles,
says the graveyard is full of dead prophets. To you, he presents
his arms, tattooed with songs slave catchers whistle
as they unleash the dogs. He lets you see the burns on his chest
from the time he set fire to boats and pushed them out to sea.
You ask why no one believes in madness anymore,
and he tells you stars need a darkness to see themselves by.
When you ask about resurrection, he says, How can you doubt?
and shows you a deer licking salt from a lynched man’s palm.
"— Traci Brimhall, “Our Bodies Break Light” (via rebuildourcities)
Make love to me in Spanish. Not with that other tongue. I want you juntito a mi, tender like the language crooned to babies. I want to be that lullabied, mi bien querido, that loved. I want you inside the mouth of my heart, inside the harp of my wrists, the sweet meat of the mango, in the gold that dangles from my ears and neck. Say my name. Say it. The way it’s supposed to be said. I want to know that I knew you even before I knew you. Sandra Cisneros, Dulzura
