from Exquisite Corpse

I am writing a book that seems to be.

That begins to flow like a river, like a new branch of a plant
growing imperceptibly in your house, a leaf
falling from a tree, a cadaver on a slab in the morgue,
a bag floating in emptiness. I say emptiness to name
a town of buildings, of cables, of windows, of desolate
antennas, of clothing and fences where no one knows anyone.

I say emptiness as one says infinite, like the end of the world.
I say I would do anything to be able to read this book and
to know what it means to be.

I say this to you like a cactus on the road of the soul,
covered in long spines.
I say this to you with a flower, red and wild, for a
crown, that you could take only without touching me.

For you to exist, there must be an outside and I am all inside.




What to do with the stars that still shine,
with the delta waters and the ferries we hid from
so that the tourists wouldn’t see two naked women
kissing in the river.

And the sun, what to do with the heat of the sun
and the crickets, and the eggs of the frogs.

What to do with the miracles of life.

And with the brothel at the port where you laughed in my arms
before taking me to that room where what was not vanquished by pleasure
was seized by forgetfulness.

What to do with farewells,
with suitcases,
with airports,
with elevators,
with sad suits,
with the departure gate,
with the furrow of a cloud,
with the silence of the sky.




I ask you, sea, how not to get carried away or excited,
how to stay calm and not lift the waves even though the wind pushes me,
and how not to beseech the rock or break, not kiss its shore, not drown it
at night and retreat in the morning, how to seem, like you,
to belong to everyone and to no one.

I would have wanted to be a tree, to cast down
the deepest roots, to remain alone, clinging to a maddening
calm even though the wind shook these branches and birds
perched on me, and to sustain the weight of their bodies, knowing that
they would leave, and not have wanted to fly after any of them
but rather to remain upright and loyal to my shadow.




I do not lose things. Things lose me.
You don’t need much to be a wanderer.
The passion of the rocks for silence.
Things do not lose me. It’s me. I trip like a chair.
One day I leave like a dog following the road.

I’m drawn to the scent of the ocean, to the old tracks of a train,
to the fennel growing under someone who sleeps, to a rabbit
standing upright in the middle of the night, to rain in a town forgotten
the way we forget the things we love.
Have you listened to Nina Simone?
“Tomorrow is my turn,” she sings in a voice fearful of a life alone.
“Tomorrow is my turn.” The tears of birds are dried by their flight.




Not to fear a peace the color of a lizard in the sun
Or the brazenness of waterfalls
Or the paths of the trail
Or a thirst for the shore
Or a night without crickets
Or a forgotten hug
Or a winged back
Or the streets and the criminals
Or the banks and the criminals
Or the useless days
Or the senseless afternoons
Or the pagan nights
Or looking at yourself in the mirror and finding nothing.




Do you know what sorrow is?
Look north. Look south. Look at the past and look
at the present. That is sorrow.
We feel sorrow for the araucaria trees, for the devastation and the miserable
ambition, for the fishermen who share their fish with those
who never had or never will have anything. Sorrow for the homeless seniors,
for those who have disappeared.

That is the sorrow with which children play,
and dogs and cats get lost
and at the table where tea grew cold, when we thought that
one day sorrow would take
its leave.




As when the rivers run dry and sadness seeps and cracks,
and the rocks remain so far from one another.

I keep writing things that will turn yellow, I open my eyes
and life goes on, brutal, medieval, beautiful and fleeting.

There where the waters sang, they hack the mountains, cutting off
what will never grow again. And thirst? What will we do about the thirst?