de Arañas (2007)
Diatribe
Diatribe
Nessim would say that the sick,
the prophets, the loners dwell in you,
all those who were deeply injured
in their sex.
O stupid land,
estranged from the sea,
your young pass by with dead music on their faces.
O soil of sanctimony and processions,
of civic functions and faulty loudspeakers,
land with no other epic than Sundays
Let the anarchy sweep you away,
and rebuild you again, perhaps.
Santa Rosa de Calamuchita, 1998
≈
Anals
The crapula and the succubæ
a court of arselickers
the Knights Templar
the minor interregnum
and a deep flaw in Islam
The territory cheerfully
ascending
to the Inferno.
≈
Regnaut de Béziers
“Exquisite the young girl, and sweet with everyone
—your taste never spares—
As for the other concern,
I see with habit, Sire,
that behind words
not always dwells a brain,
such a magnificent and subtle organ.
If I can say it,
I sense that many a voice
is governed by simple
balls of shit.”
≈
Profiles
A group of pensioners get on the half-empty bus in Embalse.
Their viscous way of walking the corridor;
the bags, the sandwiches,
the contingent jokes.
We go back to the blackness of the road,
only just altered every now and then
by some car lights.
Souls in transit
or mere passage of the flesh.
A kind of Brueghel;
the silence of sleep
concedes us some dignity.
≈
Caballito
Now I think the neighbours´ attitude
was not only benevolent with Johann, the caretaker,
who sometimes remembered the German trenches.
In fact, everybody feared the zeal
with which he used to fed the boiler.
Mr. Pencel, an archetype of the silly moderation,
and his daugther, straight from Degas,
undeservedly ethereal.
Then the Fuchs, with an indefinite number of children,
and the Bourbons, a boxers trilogy
apparently prosperous.
The Aisensteins, and that mother with a Treblinka countenance;
perhaps the only family in the building more scandalous than ours.
Mr. Maniglia had a particular rite:
whenever a bird escaped from a cage,
he´d put a bait across the street and waited
until the bird got closer, the necessary hours.
Then he’ d shot it.
A building that never
finishes falling.
≈
Outremer
Let us scorch under this pitiless sun,
surly, smelly;
let us march exhausted, suffering the cold of the night,
let us leave the faeces as we pass
and let´s leave the villages devastated,
let´s rape the women, thinking of our wives,
let´s rob the water and the food and the liquor and the catlte,
let us know
time makes epics from these filth,
and they´ll speak of us with the pomp of cloisters.
≈
Walden
I. I leave the forest for good
to return to human constructions.
Silence also
begets plague.
II. Reality becomes more suspect and fragmentary
with every winter.
I arrange words, carefully, passively.
The first person plural
seems by the minute an abuse.
III. More and more
I merely aspire
to good imitations.
Verbs begin
to decline in past tense.
≈
Tristan
Nor sad nor unfair
was perhaps the end,
since how to sustain the enraptured soul
in the torpid gravity of the world
over the timid scale
of our own hearts?
≈
Father’s Sunday
We´re watching TV the four of us.
Pompeii blends with the leftovers
going cold on the table.
In a pause, I speak of the volcanos and tell them that Arshes
spent his holidays in Santorino, which the locals call Atlantis.
Nicolas opens the eyes. Anna zaps channels.
Lucia clears the table and puts some water on for cofee.
During the afternoon I´ll joke and comment on things, just to say something.
Then they´ll go.
Luckily, they ignore it. Each Sunday that they come,
each day that passes, swift and insufficient,
I build just a part of their recalls.
≈
Stations
I go down the stair.
Nothing; the veins.
Not an idea in particular.
And then the faces in the platform
are no longer noble, austere,
vulgar, inexpressive.
Merely bodies
farther or closer than mine own
to its destiny.
≈
Cycles
I would have been six or seven years old
when you went up the Empire State
and came back fascinated by that imposing
closeness to the sky.
I remember exactly the colour of the bag,
your entrance through the hall of our house,
the gifts you brought from the trip,
though I find it hard to recompose your face in my memory.
Nicolas understands your existence in a simple way,
as a datum; he´s eight years now,
and some months ago I myself went up the Empire State
fascinated by the bridges and the longing.
I don´t know what he thought during my absence.
He maybe thought of me,
thinking of him, and Ana, and Lucia,
through the Hudson,
launching to the Atlantic mi love for them;
perhaps you too felt
that we were on up high
where the vapour of the world vanishes
and past and present seem to be justified.
And maybe he also will go up some day to that rare silence
that at least for once
turns the soul inside out like a sock.
I suppose these are unaccountable cycles,
codes of time and chance.
I know that you and I
finally went down.
≈
The possession of jade
Anals
The crapula and the succubæ
a court of arselickers
the Knights Templar
the minor interregnum
and a deep flaw in Islam
The territory cheerfully
ascending
to the Inferno.
≈
Regnaut de Béziers
“Exquisite the young girl, and sweet with everyone
—your taste never spares—
As for the other concern,
I see with habit, Sire,
that behind words
not always dwells a brain,
such a magnificent and subtle organ.
If I can say it,
I sense that many a voice
is governed by simple
balls of shit.”
≈
Profiles
A group of pensioners get on the half-empty bus in Embalse.
Their viscous way of walking the corridor;
the bags, the sandwiches,
the contingent jokes.
We go back to the blackness of the road,
only just altered every now and then
by some car lights.
Souls in transit
or mere passage of the flesh.
A kind of Brueghel;
the silence of sleep
concedes us some dignity.
≈
Caballito
Now I think the neighbours´ attitude
was not only benevolent with Johann, the caretaker,
who sometimes remembered the German trenches.
In fact, everybody feared the zeal
with which he used to fed the boiler.
Mr. Pencel, an archetype of the silly moderation,
and his daugther, straight from Degas,
undeservedly ethereal.
Then the Fuchs, with an indefinite number of children,
and the Bourbons, a boxers trilogy
apparently prosperous.
The Aisensteins, and that mother with a Treblinka countenance;
perhaps the only family in the building more scandalous than ours.
Mr. Maniglia had a particular rite:
whenever a bird escaped from a cage,
he´d put a bait across the street and waited
until the bird got closer, the necessary hours.
Then he’ d shot it.
A building that never
finishes falling.
≈
Outremer
Let us scorch under this pitiless sun,
surly, smelly;
let us march exhausted, suffering the cold of the night,
let us leave the faeces as we pass
and let´s leave the villages devastated,
let´s rape the women, thinking of our wives,
let´s rob the water and the food and the liquor and the catlte,
let us know
time makes epics from these filth,
and they´ll speak of us with the pomp of cloisters.
≈
Walden
I. I leave the forest for good
to return to human constructions.
Silence also
begets plague.
II. Reality becomes more suspect and fragmentary
with every winter.
I arrange words, carefully, passively.
The first person plural
seems by the minute an abuse.
III. More and more
I merely aspire
to good imitations.
Verbs begin
to decline in past tense.
≈
Tristan
Nor sad nor unfair
was perhaps the end,
since how to sustain the enraptured soul
in the torpid gravity of the world
over the timid scale
of our own hearts?
≈
Father’s Sunday
We´re watching TV the four of us.
Pompeii blends with the leftovers
going cold on the table.
In a pause, I speak of the volcanos and tell them that Arshes
spent his holidays in Santorino, which the locals call Atlantis.
Nicolas opens the eyes. Anna zaps channels.
Lucia clears the table and puts some water on for cofee.
During the afternoon I´ll joke and comment on things, just to say something.
Then they´ll go.
Luckily, they ignore it. Each Sunday that they come,
each day that passes, swift and insufficient,
I build just a part of their recalls.
≈
Stations
I go down the stair.
Nothing; the veins.
Not an idea in particular.
And then the faces in the platform
are no longer noble, austere,
vulgar, inexpressive.
Merely bodies
farther or closer than mine own
to its destiny.
≈
Cycles
I would have been six or seven years old
when you went up the Empire State
and came back fascinated by that imposing
closeness to the sky.
I remember exactly the colour of the bag,
your entrance through the hall of our house,
the gifts you brought from the trip,
though I find it hard to recompose your face in my memory.
Nicolas understands your existence in a simple way,
as a datum; he´s eight years now,
and some months ago I myself went up the Empire State
fascinated by the bridges and the longing.
I don´t know what he thought during my absence.
He maybe thought of me,
thinking of him, and Ana, and Lucia,
through the Hudson,
launching to the Atlantic mi love for them;
perhaps you too felt
that we were on up high
where the vapour of the world vanishes
and past and present seem to be justified.
And maybe he also will go up some day to that rare silence
that at least for once
turns the soul inside out like a sock.
I suppose these are unaccountable cycles,
codes of time and chance.
I know that you and I
finally went down.
≈
The possession of jade
“At first, it ceased to be easy,
then it ceased to be evident.”
Our cities have split again.
Better to think that there was a pause
in the flight of time.
To avoid the certainty,
to walk by the arm in the cold of the avenue,
to record doggedly
the echo of a light, the ephemeral
substance of gestures.
To what loyalties
belongs the harm?
You’ ll keep on being a blurred north
until the habit gives way.
Now you will know the mud I wield,
I know the minotaur that rules the night.
≈
Port Stanley
Better to think that there was a pause
in the flight of time.
To avoid the certainty,
to walk by the arm in the cold of the avenue,
to record doggedly
the echo of a light, the ephemeral
substance of gestures.
To what loyalties
belongs the harm?
You’ ll keep on being a blurred north
until the habit gives way.
Now you will know the mud I wield,
I know the minotaur that rules the night.
≈
Port Stanley
I´ll be only taken out with my feet ahead.
—General Mario B. Menéndez - 1982
Twice Cuchulain warned Etarcomal,
sparing his life.
“I won´t go until your blood
reddens my sword
–said Etarcomal–
or my blood reddens your sword.”
“If that is your will, your time has come”,
answered Cuchulain, and did honour to his word.
Diverse was the judgement of his peers:
Etarcomal the Brave, Etarcomal the Brief,
or Etarcomal the Idiot.
A less durable fame,
but a longer life,
choose, for instance, Iollan the Greyhound,
or Menéndez the Argentinian.
≈
Tokai
The great Tokai earthquake occurs –they said– every seventy years.
In 1911, it destroyed Tokyo.
I was in Tokyo in 1981. I remember the warnings
in the hotel lobby, in the Times, the toilets, the stairs,
the dizzy elevators.
Through the window of the room, timeless and impassive,
the cut-out image of the Imperial Palace, copying itself.
(I always kept papers, train brochures, post-cards, maps,
things to read or reread, devoted some time to the pleasure of nostalgia,
with a blind confidence in the future).
As for the rest, I walked for a month
through streets of inscrutable signs,
and exchanged bows over and over,
separated from reality.
The insistence of this memory –twenty years have passed–
responds only to the simplicity of the metaphor:
a man in the world, not getting the signs,
waiting for an earthquake.
≈
Books
sparing his life.
“I won´t go until your blood
reddens my sword
–said Etarcomal–
or my blood reddens your sword.”
“If that is your will, your time has come”,
answered Cuchulain, and did honour to his word.
Diverse was the judgement of his peers:
Etarcomal the Brave, Etarcomal the Brief,
or Etarcomal the Idiot.
A less durable fame,
but a longer life,
choose, for instance, Iollan the Greyhound,
or Menéndez the Argentinian.
≈
Tokai
The great Tokai earthquake occurs –they said– every seventy years.
In 1911, it destroyed Tokyo.
I was in Tokyo in 1981. I remember the warnings
in the hotel lobby, in the Times, the toilets, the stairs,
the dizzy elevators.
Through the window of the room, timeless and impassive,
the cut-out image of the Imperial Palace, copying itself.
(I always kept papers, train brochures, post-cards, maps,
things to read or reread, devoted some time to the pleasure of nostalgia,
with a blind confidence in the future).
As for the rest, I walked for a month
through streets of inscrutable signs,
and exchanged bows over and over,
separated from reality.
The insistence of this memory –twenty years have passed–
responds only to the simplicity of the metaphor:
a man in the world, not getting the signs,
waiting for an earthquake.
≈
Books
To my father (1917-1977)
Your books, finally, begin to be mine.
I leaf through at random
pages of Sarmiento, your beloved Chesterton,
the prose of Boissier.
I look at the marks
in the paragraphs you choose.
Why we hardly ever talked
of these things?
Did you see in me
the same rush I see in them
to face the world?
Have you, too, had the impression
of a returning solitude?
≈
To a shadow
I leaf through at random
pages of Sarmiento, your beloved Chesterton,
the prose of Boissier.
I look at the marks
in the paragraphs you choose.
Why we hardly ever talked
of these things?
Did you see in me
the same rush I see in them
to face the world?
Have you, too, had the impression
of a returning solitude?
≈
To a shadow
name is just a sound and the echo of a voice.
—Marcus Aurelius
You must have died, I suppose, more than thirty years ago,
and we´ve never heard you speak of other relatives.
The entire family murmured low
when aunt Magda introduced you as her husband.
Oscar Eulogio Gómez, retired major of the army.
A man well-manicured.
(“After you! I beg, you, please.”)
To me, I must say, you were a smug old man
—now I know it— with the failed finesse of the Argentinian military.
Even then, mycousin and I would willingly accept
the coins you gave us in front of adults
in showy secrecy.
I guess you conned eac other.
You probably seduced her with army anecdotes of uprisings and intrigues,
alluding to generals and colonels of the moment,
informally mentioned by their first names.
Twenty years younger, she must have dazzled you with fake jewels
and furs,
ever voluptuous, although she died before you.
To us, then,
you entered at once a swift oblivion.
It was a natural silence.
In truth, you were no worse than our own clan.
Maybe your fangs were more worn-out,
and you found a way to keep on eating.
Another soul in Lethe waters.
I don´t think anyone has ever spoken your name again.
That´s all I can do.
≈
Fresh Water Sea
The first ships brought the greed,
the bourbonian plebs willing
to a future illustration
in Jesuits´ custody.
The second ships brought the expulsion,
the death on sea or in oblivion,
the change of kingdom and of barbarism,
the epic of merchants.
The third ships brought the present,
the meridional hunger cohabiting with patrician flesh,
the pharisaic anger, the cornfields of pain,
the harbors in suspense.
≈
Leviathans
and we´ve never heard you speak of other relatives.
The entire family murmured low
when aunt Magda introduced you as her husband.
Oscar Eulogio Gómez, retired major of the army.
A man well-manicured.
(“After you! I beg, you, please.”)
To me, I must say, you were a smug old man
—now I know it— with the failed finesse of the Argentinian military.
Even then, mycousin and I would willingly accept
the coins you gave us in front of adults
in showy secrecy.
I guess you conned eac other.
You probably seduced her with army anecdotes of uprisings and intrigues,
alluding to generals and colonels of the moment,
informally mentioned by their first names.
Twenty years younger, she must have dazzled you with fake jewels
and furs,
ever voluptuous, although she died before you.
To us, then,
you entered at once a swift oblivion.
It was a natural silence.
In truth, you were no worse than our own clan.
Maybe your fangs were more worn-out,
and you found a way to keep on eating.
Another soul in Lethe waters.
I don´t think anyone has ever spoken your name again.
That´s all I can do.
≈
Fresh Water Sea
The first ships brought the greed,
the bourbonian plebs willing
to a future illustration
in Jesuits´ custody.
The second ships brought the expulsion,
the death on sea or in oblivion,
the change of kingdom and of barbarism,
the epic of merchants.
The third ships brought the present,
the meridional hunger cohabiting with patrician flesh,
the pharisaic anger, the cornfields of pain,
the harbors in suspense.
≈
Leviathans
Contempt penetrates even the shell of the tortoise.
—Persian proverb
Wheresoever ye be, death will overtake you, although ye be in
lofty towers. —The Koran
Hate can be taught;
A clear, patient, definitive hate.
Hate can be instilled
for your whole lineage, Ahab.
But what about your men?
What about the harpooneers,
the oarsmen, the guards,
dreaming of the gold doubloon,
and of hunting your whale,
and of the joy of joyful wives,
of whores, of proud children,
when they´ll return to the harbor?
And what about Starbuck,
subjecting certainty to a vision?
Which one of Starbuck’s faces
hopes for another fate?
≈
Herds
It is hundreds of gnus searching for pastures.
And three or four lions.
How not to think that
they could destroy them with their horns,
however little.
But gnus by nature
give up some offspring to the lions.
In this they´re similar to us.
Behind the lions
hyenas come.
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