The Great Salt Flats

The locomotive lights up the immense salt,
the blocks of salt on the sides,
the weeds mixed with salt that grow amongst
       the railroad tracks.
I hesitate . . .
and keep quiet . . .
because I am thinking of the cargo trains
that run at night through the Great Salt Flats.
The word mystery needs to be squashed
like a flea is squashed,
between two thumbs.
The word mystery doesn’t explain anything now.
(Mystery is nothing and nothing cannot be explained
       on its own)
We should replace the word mystery
(at least for today, at least for this
      “poem”)
for what I feel when I think of the
      cargo trains
that run at night through the Great Salt Flats.
A pear trembles on a plate.
Honey awakens inside a closed jar 
to the desperation of flies lying in wait, perched on the glass.
But I cannot explain 
and up till now nobody has been able to explain to me
why it surprises me to think
of the Great Salt Flats.
The waistcoated man in the dining car
has taken his glasses off.
The glasses tremble on the cloth of the
       laid table.
Everything trembles,
everything shakes,
on the train that runs at noon through
       the Great Salt Flats.
I’ve surprised myself looking
at the shadow of a plane that flies over
       the Great Salt Flats.  
But that explains nothing.
It is like a drop of water that quickly evaporates.
We have to keep busy, they say.
We have to keep busy by looking and remembering
to bury the dream
about the Great Salt Flats.
A piano hanging like a spider from its web
has stopped between the twelfth and thirteenth floors . . .
A truck passes by carrying standing
       fans    
joyfully moving their helixes.
In 1948, in Salta,
we went to hunt viscachas and frogs at night,
and the conversation died down with the fire of the
       barbecue,
overcome as we were by the sky, black
       and starry.
Nervously, on and off we switched
       the torches
until we ran out of batteries.
Nor can I explain to myself why I dream
       of torch batteries,
of batteries for transistor radios.
Neither why I dream of lightbulbs,
delicately stored in their respective
       boxes.
Or why I am amazed while looking at the
       broken filament
of a burnt lightbulb.
I’ve never seen . . .
I’ve never been able to imagine
the rain falling over the Great Salt Flats.
I don’t have objectives but I like
       to objectify.
Since childhood I’ve been trying to cut a drop of water
       in two
(with a pair of scissors).
Still today I try
clearing the table
or chasing away friends,
imitating, imagining rain falling over The
       Great Salt Flats.
I take a hot iron and I splash onto it drops
       of water.      
But even if I could imagine everything,
I’ll never be able to imagine 
the smell of wet salt flats.
Last night I came home at three in the
       morning.
In the darkness, I tripped over an item of furniture . . .
and right there I started to think  
about what I didn’t want to think about . . .
what I thought I had well forgotten!
But in reality I was escaping
from the harrowing dream of the Great Salt Flats.
And now I interrogate myself
as if I were being interrogated in prison:
“the Great Salt Flats or Salina Grande
is situated to the north of Córdoba,
near (or within, I can’t remember)
the border with Santiago del Estero.”
I’m looking at a map . . .
but this explains nothing.
The box of matches is now empty
at four in the morning
and I, desperate, pat my pockets
with a cigarette in my mouth . . .
We ought to invent fire, some
    would think.
I instead think of the reflected train
that runs at night along the Salado River.
I cannot sleep while travelling at night
knowing that on my right I have
the Salado river.
Yet even then I keep fleeing from the great
       mystery . . .
from the mystery of the inexhaustible salt of the
       Great Salt Flats.
I remember when we carelessly threw away
       sucked oranges
into the blind and blinding mirror of the
       Great Salt Flats.
(At siesta time, when the sun’s glare blinds
       more than the sun itself.)
We were hoping to arrive in Tucumán at seven
but at two in the afternoon we had to change
       a tyre
along the Great Salt Flats.
A newspaper was flying through the air . . .
the sun was calcinating the crumpled news of
       the world
from the newspaper falling on the Great Salt Flats.
And I saw a few trains pass
and even a jet . . .
The passengers of the Caravelle
or the Bac One-Eleven,
they don’t know that that bluish stain,
which perhaps they are watching at this precise
       moment,
from eight thousand metres of altitude,
that bluish stain that remains for
       only a moment,
is the Great Salt Flats,
the Salina Grande.
But the jet flies very high.
the Great Salt Flats don’t notice the shadow that
       passes.
The passengers of the jet are asleep . . .
they feel very safe.
Inside the jet there are no parachutes.
Jets don’t fall. They explode.
A few years ago,
a plane, that wasn’t a jet, was flying, I think,
       over Santa Fe.
Suddenly a door opened
and an air hostess had to silently obey
the sacred laws of physics,
and prove her unequivocal attachment to the laws
       of gravity.
A law hard like the stones inside the
       mouth of Demosthenes,
who, some say, talked a lot.
Here we need to observe a minute’s silence.
Firstly, for the docile air hostess without hostel on the
       plane.
Then, for the dead words,
dead for not saying much . . .
mystery, for example,
that doesn’t serve to explain the unexplainable,
what I feel when I think of
       the Great Salt Flats,
what I tried not to think the day
       I walked through the Great Salt Flats
trying to keep busy and to ignore where
       I was,
listening to a song by Leo Dan
that was being broadcast by LV12 Radio Aconquija
and the Piano Concerto in G Major by Ravel, aired by an affiliate 
      of National Radio.
What would Ravel, deceased, think,
if he were walking as I did
through the Great Salt Flats.
Ravel, modestly sentimental,
I imagine you playing the piano that I saw today,
       hanging
between the twelfth and thirteenth floors.    
Yes, poor Ravel of 1932,
with a tumour in his head, which by then
       wasn’t allowing him to compose.
Ravel playing alone,
at night (but mind you, absolutely alone)
the Valses nobles et sentimentales in the midst of
       the Great Salt Flats.
I am sure he would have paused
as he’d heard the far-away whistle of the locomotive
to see the beam of light at a distance
and the twilight over the Great Salt Flats.
A few days ago I went to Hospital.
I used to be there years ago,
carefree and in my white coat.
But now, as a simple patient,
I heard the distressing little noise  
Trank!
of the radiography machine.
Who’s next? the nurse shouted.
But the next won’t be able to explain to me
why I am thirsty,
why I go after the water captive in the
       bottle
and the salt captive in the salt cellar,
I, even I,
captured in the dream of the Great Salt Flats.
A friend, a high state official,
offered me his free pass to travel around the whole
       country.        
In any case, he said, it’s an unnamed pass,
anyone can use it . . .
if I lend it to them.
The unnamed pass dazzled me
like the logo on the wheel cover I read and reread
while we were changing the tyre along the
       Great Salt Flats.
But then I thought of Tucumán
(my home away from home)
and of the blue vertebrae of the Aconquija
perforating the white clouds.
Now I discover that my friend,
the one with the unnamed pass,
has separated from his wife. 
I keep quiet . . .
But the silence now makes me think
of what I didn’t want to think when I saw the pass
       without a name that was offered me,
of what I stopped thinking a moment ago . . .
when I saw the lift pass by with a woman
       in silence
that didn’t want to let me in.
Let’s forget the missed lift,
and think again, head-on, of the salt
(sodium chloride)
and of the mystery . . .
But as there is no mystery
Let’s make a hasty translation:
miss Tery
or miss Tedious
or girl surrounded by terrified lapwings
or something like that.
But no distraction suffices.
The kitchen hand from the dining car
scratches his head from time to time
but continues peeling potatoes undistracted
on the train that approaches the Great Salt Flats.
And the missed lift with the silent woman
keeps on running for kilometres between the
      ground floor
and the fifteenth.
The tailor opposite who has finished eating
leans out for fresh air with the measuring tape hanging  
       from his neck.
I think of eating, as you can see . . .
It’s exactly two o’clock, eight minutes,
       thirty seconds.
And also, I don’t know why,
I think of the pocket battleship Graf Spee  
that at the beginning of the last war
committed suicide before his captain did,
opposite Punta del Este.
The Graf Spee lies thirty metres
       deep.
Nobody remembers it now.
Not even the frogmen
who descended to explore its entrails.
But even the frogmen
come up to lunch at noon.
And sometimes, to eat,
they only remove their goggles and their
        oxygen tubes.
Still there are people who get surprised by seeing
       those men eating . . .
in swim fins.     
The frogmen complain to the waiter about the salt
       he forgot!
Come on! Come on!
Today I lunch with friends
(if they haven’t left).
I will ignore the salt and will ask for pepper
       instead,
because I’m afraid of keeping quiet.
We know why.
I don’t want to keep quiet,
nor to keep busy.  
We know why.
In reality nothing is known
of the dream with the batteries,
of the rain over the salt,
of the girl in the lift,
of the tailor leaning out with the measuring tape hanging
or of the train that passes at night, indifferently
between what is already known
and unknown.



*

Years ago I believed
that “after lunch is a different thing” . . .
in other words, that things are different
after lunch.
This poem (let’s so call it),
split in two by lunch
and resumed later, contradicts me.
I didn’t eat dessert.
My mouth feels salty!
But I won’t insist.
Last Sunday,
in the house of a poet friend
I met a Chilean novelist, a leftist,
who went to Beijing and who, possibly,
I might never see again in my lifetime.
Timidly, between five from Buenos Aires and one
       Chilean leftist,
I managed to get a phrase in by Lautréamont,
who as a good Frog is Uruguayan
and if he is Uruguayan he is from Entre Ríos.
A (salty) line to finish
       (or to interrupt) this poem:
“All the water in the sea would not suffice to wash out
        one stain of intellectual blood.”