Fated Passenger

I

This is the way we are
And the way we move about the earth
Preceded by the sounds of our ancestors
and followed by the pain of our children
Held to our age and singing when the stones
mourn the death of a sailboat they had arbitrarily preferred
Or perhaps because they watched it play as a child
Or because it was beautiful all full of wind arriving from the country of wind
We are unafraid when the wind tears
words from our throat
We are unafraid of the whales and all those
monsters more vast than the chimes
We are unafraid to lean against your
songs from which might spring an ominous
fountain and the mists’ infinite vertigo
We are unafraid of the beyond that shakes like a
mute the beyond that leaps over all our reasoning
And that lucid cold that monitors the constellation of our anxiety
More absurd than the dead they buried with
half a letter in the brain
With a fabulous word in the center of the tongue
With a giant face between two threads of tears at the base of the eyes
Those eyes to become tender pebbles on the roads of the beyond
All of this is useful to form the surface
For the interest of an impatient fire deep down below
And we have to note its work and praise its law
It’s late in every corner of the world
It’s late and the afternoon will sink into the ocean
Still clinging to the helm of the horizon
He keeps this secret as the only captain
He raises his hands to release the recent dead
Now that you tremble like the ocean
The horizon will sink forever
Now that the forest passes to the enemy
Throw yourself onto the ocean
Splitting the waves like a corpse splits time
Man you can see the water swell and you’re afraid
You might as well jump over the fire of kindred lies
Invade sidereal terrain without hesitation
Invade the nations of the mad who despise you and see you only from the bottom of their soul
Announce your importance to the modest tribe that
emerges from behind the sky




II

The earth is fevered for the secular hymns of birds
It’s the useless awakening of the tribe igniting at every turn
The sea cleans its waves its waves to soften the world
And spread caresses until the land’s extinction
They’ll likely polish the sky like the bow of a great ship
Maybe grow old after midnight before
the haunted trees
The trees with bad luck the trees lost like the
grandfather trying to escape our depths
And make gestures of absence in the emptiness
This is the abrupt event after damnation
The usual misery of those who cannot stop rivers
And must mourn their deaths like mountains
Wishing in vain to close the sea
Tomorrow the foam will offer new considerations
Form sparkling crowns so my heart might move like your best ships
A catastrophe of note flees without awaiting its result
Sinking with sails unfurled in ancient waters
Not even glancing at the king adrift who has forgotten emergency maneuvers
Like no one else I’ve seen open desolation rise beneath my feet
And felt in my eyes the shock of the stars
Maybe identical to those places unknown
The distance without solution
The height where someone left a footprint
The tree’s extremity where the infinite begins
And the sea in the distance like the terror of night
Silence I beg you silence
There is a dream between men
There is a dream between men and auguries
We thirst for a place without unease or reckoning
Where the demon in the storm has dead eyes and cropped hair
Silence I beg you silence
Watch the mesmerized ship of my soul as it passes
Dragging its long beard of water
See that star at the base of the sky
That star that makes off with all the sailors




III

We must cast the numbers and follow them with our eyes
Watch them take their places seek the unjust height of smoke
Or fall to the bottom of memory
I’m telling you don’t be twisted in the wind
You have to knock on the hurricane’s door
You must never run from the approach of horror
or the simple bride who sings the joy of her arteries
No chasm can disturb the laughter of your heroic teeth
No breath can tarnish the metal of your soul
Nor shake up the buildings inside you
I would see them shine forever with the phosphorous of time
Above the virile wing immobilized by its brightness
Don’t wait for that promised encounter in deep eternal velvet
We must cover the shipwreck with a woolen quilt
We must greet the oracles of the sea
Shackle paradise to the fire of our voice
Return our heart to its stores
We don’t want handouts from our lives
We must seal the shipwreck with a cork
Forget the flight of desperate hands
There are no extenuating circumstances for the sky
I don’t want to slip on clouds or fall into traps
laid by a nameless enemy
Let the desperate death howl and release its seed
Let it stagger among the rocks of its abyss
That divide men
That divide men into shadow and light
The hint of mystery
The choice between two shores
You won’t see me tremble either
Here is the endless pole here is the ocean
Here is the shipwreck lidded with metal
The wreck is a dish of heaven
You won’t see me tremble
Not even at the last level midnight
That virgin midnight of all who await us on the shores of ourselves
That final midnight that sometimes falls keel up
You won’t see me tremble
To the contrary I will rattle the shadows around me
The wind to push me I’ll prepare for myself
The great lonely wind chasing destiny’s embrace
Behind the last stone where the last
spent siren clings beneath the weight of her sonorous hair
Here is the darkened stone or first stoplight of the infinite
irresistible like the eyes of vertigo
Here the stone stands as tall as the statue of destiny
Beyond lies the place without forehead or form
The place bitter like the wind after lightning
The place empty where a feather glides from the start of the world
Where everything is buried and dissolves in the folds
of the risible mantle adorning cosmic beggars
Beggars in millennial agony crawling
bound by the law of hallucination searching for evidence