—Rimbaud, Illuminations
You’ll open the door to poetry because poetry doesn’t know what it’s looking for and asks for the shade of light and asks for the river and the sea and eats cherries off the tree. Poetry spy and watchman of trees and mountains, and thief of the secret and of the mysteries pent in glass, and drunkenness of night mourning for the widowhood of day. Poetry of the telegram and poetry of the telephone. Poetry of the letter in the mailbox. Poetry of the envelope and the melon eaten by love’s wound. Poetry between the peach and the airplane’s letter. Poetry between you and me. Poetry between he already came and left and disappeared, between the fruit and the seed bearing the message from the lover who won’t come back.
Poetry of a shark with two whales and a scarecrow. Poetry of a crab and a turtle. Poetry of an elevator and two cars. Poetry of a giant and a dwarf. Poetry of the clown and the drunkard. Poetry of the star and the wall. Poetry of the summer and the mountain. Poetry of the flying rabbit and the dancing shoe. And poetry of the pain of joy and poetry of the joy of pain. Poetry of the bat and the witch. Poetry of the torn shoe and the barefoot stockings and the horizon that looks for you when you’re approaching the mountain. And poetry of the hill you descend when you’re expecting the call. And poetry of the number lost in the magician’s hat. And poetry of the parakeet’s feather and poetry of the parrot and the parasol. And poetry of the shadow and the witness. And poetry of the accident and the surprise. And poetry of the love that never arrives because it escapes with the magician’s hat. And the word poetry, and the sound poetry, and the shadow poetry become two real numbers, two real clowns, two jumbo jets, two cheers that no one hears because shattered in the air they cease being air and shattered against the wind they cease being wind. And poetry without mountain and without hill. And poetry without absence and without emptiness. And poetry of the night and the witness in shadow, in dust, in nothing.
Poetry is this screaming madwoman. Everything seems poetry. Madmen gaze high. Everything seems madness. Madmen fear no moon, fear no fire. Burns of flesh are poetry. Madmen’s wounds are poetry. The witch’s crime was poetry. Magic knew how to find its poetry. The star wasn’t poetry before the madwoman discovered it. Discovery of fire in the star. Discovery of water with sand. Neither poetry nor prose. Salt is for fish, salt is for death, the poem is not among the dead. Remember, but don’t write it. Love her duendes and act as her Lazarus, but don’t wake her. Sleepwalker among cats, thief among dogs, man among women, woman among men, blasphemous toward religion, fed up with poverty. Tear out poetry’s voice. Don’t let her find you, hide. Disregard her, ignore her, forsake her. Don’t touch her wounds, she’ll scorn you. Back away. Scorn the poem. Develop without her. Give her the necessary distance. Let her feel conceited. Then insult her for not having written with power. Deride her dreams, slap her eyes. Kneel down and ask her forgiveness. Take the poem from her belly. Sleep beside her, but don’t avert your eyes. Listen to what she tells you in dreams. Acknowledge her when you see her spell the names of hell. Descend with her into hell, climb her streets, burn within her history. There are no names, no history. The volcano erupts and rushes toward the poem. I can’t do anything but bash her against a rock. I can’t do anything but embrace her. I can’t do anything but insult her dreams, and she can’t do anything but open the poem for me, just a crack, a crack in silence, without watch-men or maidens, with a fowl and an owl to keep distant, to keep silent, to show up barefoot. And she couldn’t do anything but crash against the rocks, and the wind couldn’t do anything but blow her locks, and time couldn’t do anything but eternalize her moment. And poetry is nowhere in the castle. She disappears through the trapdoor, escapes with the fire that burns her and dissolves in water.
I have been a fortune-teller. Ages ago, I told the fortune of buffoons and madmen. You remember. I had a small voice like a grain of sand and enormous hands. Madmen walked over my hands. I told them the truth. I could never lie to them. And now I am sorry. Ages ago, a drunkard filled with dreams asked me to dance. I used my cards to tell his fortune when his drinks became blows. My banging on the door killed the sea. Memories finished us. Madmen and buffoons count the grains of sand and have never destroyed night’s dreams. They draw up the night and rise filled with middays. Magicians were and always will be my companions. Without guessing their tricks I started fire in their throats. But none explode. Maybe one. And with the fish another chimera rises.
The circus had a white elephant and a red turtle. All my enemies are drunkards and friends of my body. Only they open the doors of my eyes and suck, suck ten kilos of love and gulp, gulp fourteen kilos of chimeras. Stars forewarn me of ten years and predict twenty more. And the owl sits on my smaller arm. And the madman intimidates it. And drunkards ask for shade. Too many cards about too many chimeras. Take the bottle and raise it. Let us toast in the name of tricks. Then the magician emerged from another side of me, lifted his shadow, and destroyed the drunkard. Hot and cold conversations create words in color from all angles of my body. Shadow arches frame this scene. Drunkards will fill their bottles with other stories that buffoons are planning around the border of this painting. There’s only a black chimera left drinking the liquor of stars. And a fortune-teller sitting on the stairs.
It was true and it was a lie, too. That’s why I got drunk, said the buffoon sitting on the stairs. The fortune-teller suddenly arose and told the buffoon, the stars divined it, it was written in the cards. King of spades and buffoon do not mix, added the madman leaning against the door. Everyone except me, said the madman, is looking at the future of the sea. But the sea is a king without a sword. That’s why he is sitting on the stairs next to the buffoon. Here are the cards, said the fortune-teller. Here is the king without a sword, with his wicked card. Here died the drunkard with his bottle. Here is the screaming madman, with his wells full of water, searching an empty orbit.
I am the magician. Back away! Here is the trick. You see it from a distance because you can’t see it up close. Come closer. You look for it in my hands and the trick escapes between my legs. Don’t look at my legs. The trick isn’t on the stairs. The trick is that flying bird. The spectators stood up hoping to see the flight and see the magician on the stairs. Suddenly ten firemen arrive with their big slickers and hoses. Back away! Back away! Come closer! Come closer! The trick was that flying bird, and the spectators stood up and asked: What’s going on? No one answered them. Then they saw that the bird had already left. And they asked again: What returns? Then there was a fire and the magician vanished. When the lights blacked out, then, and only then, the bird with a fallen wing came forward to the edge of the stage and cried out: Victory! Victory! I have burned the spectators.
We’ll play another theatrical scene. It consists of one act, divided into three parts. We: leading actor. You: stage director. I’m the audience. Open curtain: four chairs and a ladder lost in the dark. The ladder, the ladder, says the director. The chair, the chair, breaks in the leading actor. The curtain falls. The lights go out. The curtain rises again. One can be in the front of this theater listening and laughing: I am, we are, all laughing. And the curtain falls on this play. And the desert, I’m thirsty, I forgot the words. Please don’t tear silence from me. Let me escape quietly. The lights have stopped looking at me. I feel like setting myself on fire. Firemen of the night, get me out of here. Cut, cut, said the director. Let’s wind it up.
Adventurous and silent actor, filling himself with mouths and faces, with an absent-minded look, open hands, double-dealing anger, lies and shams in just one secret, intrigue of a handkerchief, with fewer dreams, checking his hat for the trick with the scarecrow and the mirror. And parting with everything that cuts, cutting his orange in halves, lifting his head, doubling his fracas, looking for his return and hiding from the world, emerging and exposing his whole body, cut between hand and foot, cut between night and morning, with a closed fist and a grain of mustard, filling himself with stars, cutting corners, with his hands on night, and
his mouth in sorrow, in the station of the port, in the house of the world, in the tree of the hand, in the fist of the sand.
I want to be rid of this corpse that murders my soul. I have other things to say. Get away from me. Leave me alone. I request another name, another clown. Too many buffoons, too many dead dwarves. I want a giant. Get out of my body. Don’t take the corpse from me, let it walk away. Swing with the trapeze, glide. Make me a shoe or nail the sole into me. Become a sock and wear me. I have a nickel for the dance and the comedy. You see, that’s just what I was telling you. I have no comedies. Kill me if you want. But do for me the black, the white, the void. Absence, as though it were the death of absence. As though absence could drop dead, dead. Of course, the corpse is a stick that walks. Of course, the stick gives you a blow on the head. Of course, you should never play with death.
With both lined up four abreast, she read me the cards. Poor drunkard of the tale. Two fortune-tellers dead. And a room full of bottles. The clown is drunk. And the cards of death wait on him. His snout is blue, and he looks like a bear. And the rag doll of death—you can’t love him like this—with the clown flinging him by the arm—madness. Because he is drunk and has no river or breakdown. Because they cork him in, unable to love him. Because stars no longer love him.
I’m sitting on this page, between one line and another, between a buffoon and another clown, between two syllables, and I jump up, and touch the page with the tip of my finger, and throw it into the basket. And I look at it, and become a basket, and repent. And I start to cough, and throw the ball, and pick it up. And I kiss the sky, lifting my arm to fall to the floor, torn, and to rise and cry out. And I’m restless. I need to throw the ball away, so I can lose the page, and then I can laugh or cry. Whatever happens, nothing matters. Because I sleep, dream, awaken, weep, kiss your left cheek, and walk slow, walk fast, where are you, I call you and hide and find you and knock you to the ground, we undress and backtrack, it’s the safest way, the star is waking, and the moon is crying to the earth that constantly watches her. Because the sun won’t come out, there is no noon, and the orange is locked in its rind, and the snail tucks into its shell, and the world stays inside its house. And we look at one another, sad, mad, and we don’t know what to say. Later Mom will come to wake us. Brother, quiet, quiet. The earth yawns because it isn’t sleepy.
Giving me your hand, you pick it up to frame it. Darting into the street, you’re run over by an oncoming car. Throwing myself into the basket, I turn into an ashtray and touch the cigarette. Collapsing into the tomb, I sleep, sleep. Opening the closets, I say enough, enough. Closing them, I’m left sad, sad in a closet. Opening the sadness of the closet, I lift four and I’m left with two. Even and uneven, brother, they’ll always be brothers. Widowers from the orphanage, the uneven, squared. The sled is triangular. The uneven say so. Heavens and stars repeat it. The worm and the snail and the tree shout it. The uneven is crying. Stars console him. Nights wake him. The piano destroys him: duende and mermaid, gnome and deer. Four, uneven: paired. I dive into the slide. And I grow and awaken. Five years, ten even, twelve tied. Three brothers.
I touch everything, to add it up, and subtract ten, four more. Five loners and ten kings, two swords. The fortune-teller and her wicked deck. Heavens and stars play solitaire. I know it, I’ll know how to say it. I’ll flip the cards, check them, and close my hands. Two swords cross the hand of the fortune-teller. And cards don’t lie. Widower, I will be, you will be, four stars and two cats fighting in every street, a worm. And a crystal ball, rolling luck, hitting the ball, ten blows, two falls. At night, in the streets of death, between the sun and the fortune-teller, ten cards, two lies. I understand, a blackened eye is worthless, and the stars pass and return regardless.
In all corners and squares and circles, just one heart, prophecy of five hearts and a loner on the road, and a drunkard without a bottle, sober from madness, solemn and hidden. Widower of two stars and a road. Three corners opening the drunkard’s eyes, stars and chimeras, and rivers of sadness. No one is laughing. The drunkard keeps him company, and the bottle heals his wounds. There is a square corner on the road of two. Looking for you in four, company, I am two. Corner of the third, I am another, less ten. I understand your fall, but I am five, not ten. Understand the hill, they are twenty, never two. I understand, a blackened eye is worthless, and the same stars pass and return regardless.
A mob of witches and killers. You look like an idiot, the hat doesn’t have ears, the street doesn’t have legs, buildings don’t walk, obscurities don’t talk. Idiot, you have a tongue, speak. You idiot, I was on the verge of speaking. I fell deaf—said the killer. Birds don’t sit, dogs don’t kneel, bats don’t shrug. Idiot, shoulders are shrugged. You idiot, I hope the witches destroy the fire. Killers have blocked my aqueducts. I speak for the killers, cops never ask anything. I raise the possibility of the question. You idiot, not even wolves howl. Ask Little Red Riding Hood, it was a flood of machine guns and rifles, she told me so. I thought they’d kill me. You idiot, not the killers, the cops. And I turned my back on them.
Treason, treason, treason. Death, death, death. Ecstatic bewitching throat, fire is blind, blind, blind. Vanish chimney. Smoke-filled eyes. Fire. Crime-covered hands. Duel of the godfather and the pirate. The sword, the dungeon. I see a beacon of black butterflies. The crime has vampire eyes. Cassandra conducts the orchestra. Joan, the mad witch, groans. Someone round has committed a crime. Someone perpendicular to the base of the triangle has emptied the stream. The prodigious crime has destroyed the stores. Omen! Omen! the witch cried out. Ecstasy, ecstasy, the comic tragedy. The earth quakes, the news, the omen, the prodigious crime. Dwarves of the prodigy, rabbits of the syringe nurse, ambulance of the dancing trapeze artist, fire of turtles, flash of pain, fencing duel, caveman, fireman, gas mask, bomb, pliers of the crab.
Hysteria, I have a dead son in the belly of the city. My mourning is the edge of the world. I have both navels empty in the center. My mother abandoned me. I’m raising the belly of the city. I gather pigs, the breeding ground of mourning. There is no belly, pedestrian, there is no belly, transitory wind. I scream at the top of my lungs, my lever is the parachute of life. I hear you, fertile belly. I examine your limbs, electric organism, ventriloquist. Marionette woman, sleight of hand creature, the wolf married grief, and Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother fled crying out to the murderers. You bitch, cold hysteria. Neither the policeman nor his motorcycle stop you. But I stop you. Halt, cold hysteria! Halt!
Laughter, laughter, laughter, I’m happy, I dance, because you’re crazy, unsettled, I’m lost in a world. You said world, I understand, I see world. Hell. I don’t feel you. I’ve stopped thinking. I felt cold. And I went wild, dancing in a cardboard tumbler. I wiped it out, erased the line, animal, only you remain. It was twelve. I’ll be back in five minutes. No, please, let me sleep. Ocean, I need to find out. Returning eye, go away. I am asleep. Approaching eye. Back off. Please, I need to sleep. Anesthesia, I keep lizard hours, but please, I don’t have a centaur’s tail. I’m not a dragon or a giraffe. I’m finished. I need some sleep. Lifeless, no, I’m not that old, but tell, tell the lizard, I love. And even if the tail is fire. Prove it with kisses. C’mon, I dare you. Coward. I try to erase the line twice. The giraffe’s line or laughter’s? No, the centaur’s line with a dragon’s tail. I mean, the giraffe. Unsettled. The dead man rises. Poor thing! Let him sleep. I am asleep. Not me, not me. Please, corpse, leave me alone, I beg you: let me sleep.
I vanished, I almost became wind, phantoms are not white. Recognize them, I told you. Learn to vanish. Don’t fly so high. Keep sleeping on the stairs next to the drunkard. What are you talking about? Don’t you understand me anymore? What are you asking me? It’s been two days, speak to me. I’m listening. And we’re not two elevators, let’s face it, we don’t have buttons or buildings anymore, we don’t even have seas or deserts. The streets have spoken to me four times. The fifth time, I’ll shut them up. Traffic, the red light says wa
lk, the green, stop. Traffic is submissive, solitary. Policemen are firemen, ambulances are the ambivalence of danger! Danger! Hysteria told you to halt! And halt! arrested me. Life is coffee made from rainwater. The house’s hat is not a chimney. Steam, evaporate. I subtract three months from March to December. The addition of two zeros, see you later, see you later. The door up in flames, and the garbage asking for the corpse. The world chatting with the dialogue. And life at the railroad station emitting smoke, unsettled, the months of the world’s train and the gates of the northern hemisphere.
Happiness is the quiet hand, don’t you see it flying, happiness is crazy, I see it near the couch, sitting, rising, flying, leaf falling to the ground, and floating up again, I see it floating near the river, fishing for turtles. Happiness. The killer’s hand, the Sunday turtledove, as Papa had a canary and Miguelito had a parrot. And I loved Bracho. And I played turtles with Juan. Edmée! Edmée! Juan hit me with the racquet. Bracho, we’re near the tennis court. They look at us, we hit the balls, they send them back, the racquet got angry at me. Can you believe it, the world, no, not the world. Pilo, come with me, follow me. Mama, it’s been a while since we played tennis. But there are two huge racquets that hit me, two huge shotguns, two billiard balls, in the world’s court, horror, playing with us, playing with me.
Empire of Dreams Page 3