www.ensconet.eu/es/Dormicion.htm, accessed in 2001
TRYON PARK
WITH MUNIRA, THE BRILLIANT ONE, ALINA, THE NOBLE ONE, AND ALTAGRACIA, THE DOMINICAN
Today I came across Mr. El Janabi, who lived a life of grand detourner des mots
because the words always know the way and enter the Red Sea
who wouldn’t sit in the forests of Vincennes to speak of Cioran
the Romanian said to him
you should go to Paris to learn Romanian
and if you can, wherever you go
take care of yourself
not so much from the maudlin in power
nor
from the brotherhood where they are all watching each other
but
from the ignorance of the self
since everything else
such as taking care of yourself
you, as a civilian, will end up alone
whether you believe it or not
the fabric of your youth will give to an occasional cut or two
with your mystical recollections each time
you are able to chew on a sunset
with its woman’s back to you
how we tell each other apart at landings
the righteous and the stray carry the same sign of indiscretion
and schoolchildren filled with lessons
from dangerous primers
learn to read with the large eyes of sacred cattle
pharaohs in murals of torn scrolls
in worthy mosaics or in bad ones
and in copies scattered in Moorish quarters from one end of the desert
to the other
which are already fodder
for film festivals
DARLING, HE WHO TALKED ABOUT IBN AL-`ARABI WITH RACHID SABBAGHI, WHILE SALVAGING BOOKS LEFT BEHIND DURING AN EXODUS IN ALGECIRAS, DOES NOT REMEMBER YOU
see how you live
in the eyes of their children
those steps into the abyss
how beasts swim there with holy scriptures and civilian casualties
as well as the widened eyes of a quick death
in keys passports foreign currency in send-offs and the usual gift of a car
at graduation
brought over to Caracas so they could eat well
we won’t know if they were happier
Ever noticed how the road that leads you nowhere makes you feel epic?
after swallowing corals from the sea and using them around the house
after the exaltations
of cashew trees and tales of patriotism are preserved in jars
classified memories in Picasa
of life exposed
in a pamphlet
after the first lessons of the book Violeta and the soap sent over from La Toja
to the school-oasis in Almería
when no justifications were necessary
for those group portraits
flanked by the great mummies each decade bears
you will return to the Andalusian women teachers of Ibn Àrabi
in Marchena de los Olivares
in Cordoba
to
care for the sweet pepper
in the tea cups
neither the epic
nor hunger
nor the impassioned life of the elementals
is as worthy as keeping to the road and leaving nothing of your own
they read
and as they read
they forgot
MR. EL-YANABI ERASES MUNIRA’S SHADOW IN THE PARK
in the translations of Iraqi documents
they tuck in Arevalo’s poems in San Félix
which echo the sounds of the Al-Fatihah on Šams Um al-Fuqará’s lips
Nunna Fatima lend me your spit
because I am an ignorant woman
I bury myself in Averroes’s books without opening them
I am no longer an attentive houri
I am neither gracious nor enraptured
breath fails me
and now when I love you I feel around
to where my prostheses
have been scattered
as if I could be a student of Ibn Àrabi traveling
from palace to dune
to pay homage at his tomb in Damascus
as though I could read or chant
poems read only by
the sleepless
the lonely
sons of beekeepers and soldiers fleeing
the Holy Father
Alina, who sees whom we will become
old women, girls in Inwood’s shelter
heeding
the chants of Algonquin capped by those scalps full of bees
and Dominican co-eds from Harvard
whose grandmothers reach safe-haven because of debts
with their desiccated saint
sleeping among relics
on Cabrini Boulevard
when we grow old in the Hudson
no longer do we hear stories of
elected assemblywomen, queens who rarely prove inexpensive
in the journey of tribes
bartering with other tribes
Mr. Al-Yanabi—Sabbaghi’s friend from Casablanca, friend of Gasca now
a translator, grand detourneur de mots of the Chaima
of Itúrburo, the one from Guayaquil
of Tenreiro
from La Coruña—has forgotten me
disappearing with today’s men
where we live
unless I were to speak to his birds
if they would fly back
once his war is over
Francisco Arévalo every morning
THE HUNTER AND HIS HOUNDS WHEN THEY TAKE THEIR REST IN THE SHRINES
The tired ones go to rest on Syriac’s fragments
trying to get some sleep
they set out in pilgrimage through the world collecting pebbles
in search of decent shade
a good woman
a laconic poet, a prophet of whales,
unemployed
before he’s hungry
an ephemeral shelter sighted among rosebushes
with a book on migration on his shoulders
he is the first to leave
scattered letters reveal themselves one afternoon
in his mind
they turn into larvae
and dust
given to the miraculous tumors
extracted from trees
live gills used in writing
lyrics chewing on trees which unsettle us
sold in its lyric-wrapper this painkiller
this poem
give me
stones or the flesh of dates
fast food swirling in the stomach of those trained
to remember well
which harms us
we step away from training paths
we are no longer summer’s leisure
serving a pleasant poet
on break from negotiations at the hour
of free admission
the last of the overgrown almond trees
the girls flitting there
expert beaks first start scraping
at my hands which time has cracked open
under a well-lit frame you awaken with a stroke
we adjust our lenses, the leaves used for our pain, aiming with my cell phone
against the carelessness of guards I fire between your eyes
you are in my network
And now you are not
and you turn me into a literary journalist
posting with fury
like religious tourists who make the stones speak
while strengthening their legs and the muscle of faith
topical is the healthy experience of the diverse
fawning over portals, confessionals
the closest utopia
of manners and faces and cu
linary habits
the dogma of the Virgin Odigitria or iconoclastic persecutions
our device receives blank messages
and also
exhausts you
THIS CENTURY , GALERY EXPERTS DISCOVER, WITH THE USE OF INFRARED CAMERAS, A NEW SKETCH BY DA VINCI BENEATH THE MADONNA OF THE ROCKS
“It was an extraordinary moment when we shone the camera on the
Madonna’s face and instantly we saw a hand which had no place there”
statement made by female expert to the British daily
The Gaurdian
when we are more or less sober
the first of July
the BBC flirts with the artist’s regret
let’s reveal a woman on her knees
with her arm extended
Prompting a beginning
these are the last of human lines
curators are called in urgently
the galleries
carry the fragrance of the market
sniffing at the artists
offering them a post in this death
that must be earned as we earn
life
by summer’s perfumed air: you take it or you leave it
FOUR
MESSAGE NETWORKS
(AUREA AND THE VOICES)
To one’s ears night in Beirut could sound beautiful. But you step out of the scene and come across Saida Baida wherever love seizes you. Cheikha Remetti’s breath is hoarse as I came across her in Paris she, coming from Oran and I, on my way there, go ahead, I pursue you.
When the cage’s unlatched and she steps out like an arctic vixen, groomed, quick, dangerous, and flush as an artery, she is the lover of a bride who dances for her. Remitti won’t mind the cost of the ride or if I am a poor singer, I follow you home. Remmetez, remmetez, Saida Baida, I am at the Stalingrad Bar, a simple sehakia who’s never been to Mecca, without an orchestra of medahates.
Ahá, ahá
ehm, ehm
another round for all of us
Oh my mother dressed for
El Wali’s visit
teach me the way, let me sing
whoever knows love has known death
(FALSE) MEMORIES OF NINA BERBEROVA
Altagracia will marry and leave her child to the care of Munira
who invited Alina, the noble one, for a dinner of dry fish
in the custom of their grandmothers in Campechuela
Akhmatova on the cut glass of a frozen river
when Altagracia made a Russian poet melt
Akhmatova of Neva, Altagracia calls her daughter Nevanina
—her Dominican ways
that river never rid my mother
out
from death as a wintry
scandal
don’t think
Anna Andreyevna Akhmatova in Neva
is a broken link
beatings on ice
like a swan
As Katherine Manfield
and Marina Tsvetaeva
her last words
were for a Russian lover
I fear the love of her blue eye shadow
smoking
saved
in a fresh tomb
I am alive, so what? blushing
at your urgency
I walk the mangrove of this newborn island
a Bejuca serpent conjured by household witches
another branch softly binds to my legs
with that cannibalistic manner
of latitudes set to simmer
by dusk’s air
the strain Munira knows all too well, on my bed
without morbid cult for a hormonal spell that lasts all night
induced
or neglected
without
the confusion of the living on the opposite sidewalk
when I close my eyes the white animal on the train
with its white climates
takes me to the jeweler of the red river
a chest with Ophelias
prompting traffic
from north to south on the Hudson we learn to dance
with Mambí
and
a poem by Mandelstam turn us into romantics
with decency
at Yale
but Akhmatova
—Munira, the brilliant one, often weeps
while caring for Nevanina, and because of the great Berberova, her example of
impeccable errancy
alas, if Akhmatova
if Tsvetaeva if Mandelstam, if Sabbaghi
would have managed to swim here
without tartan grandparents
nor translations of Leopardi
nor a Berber mother reciting Rosalía’s verse
fishing for a morsel, like Nina Nikolayevna Berberova did so to
to make room in this river when the Seine left her on a boat again
made old
in no time—by the grace of the holy women who follow her everywhere
she fell in love again, became a professor of notable Russian
poetry, not far from the Hudson
by Neva’s fires
the widening eyes of the Neva River
like fish sent back
yes
DELETE
(THE FRESH SAINT)
Pineal body, hypothalamus or third eye, I pick at your brain to understand you
Located on top of the diencephalon, between the cranial colliculi, in an area called the pineal fossa, this gland is activated by the absence of light
if ours were a love story
I would give you my third eye
my kidneys which filter you out
a bunch of weeds I would bring you from the field
and I, the zombie
I, your junkie
without searching or waiting
long-lived larvae of the placebo’s portal
rats in love
in this broth of Wiki
the encyclopedia of my tales of creatures hung
around the neck of my frozen one
SEND
(THE EMBALMED ONE)
I don’t know what to tell you
you wear too much makeup on your face
before you were queen of a bear’s hive
now a dead bee
much later
a girl aged then another and another infanta
with a costly inferno to your hips
Greek up to the hilt
that Callas note coursing through the cliffs
with a string of gray pearls
as a warning
Sappho
lays opens her winter coat
expensive legs
severed at the exact place
and where I see a woman resting on my shoulder
asking for a tale
while a drop takes partial effect because it brings us
love
I don’t know what to tell you
you will crush roots
swallow pearls
become a broken record
got to leave her in peace
while your blood draws close to mine
bones drawn to its metal
I see her loom large in the grass
Melissa flowers for maidens
stoned to death by the Goddess’ silence
in my cup
beneath her colorful resin
hands pressing the wombs of the rats in the city
protein from bad days
I dig
oblivion the ring
the precious stone
indeed my love
a gene weakens ideas or blood or the breasts
of white pets with the cure
female amputees with healthier brains
also face it
time spent on x-rays
weeping
feeling like stray dogs
they are food
for a dragon with a pink ribbon
by health campaigns
our working bones now stunned as
they follow you
retouching your Pharaoh eyes with eyeliner
gently, I shut the sarcophagus
I watch over your dream
INTERVIEW OF THE MADONNA OF HODEGETRIA, THE ONE OF THE ARROW
in ancient times, so-called melancholy ones, they have gone after torches
let’s talk about the road
in a hollow, we used to tell stories
about
salt grounds being torn apart and we found no roots for our supper
or it is the hour to take flight, I only think to tell stories
suppose that you and I
collected tumors
for expensive tinctures
you, busy with rosebushes
that there are still libraries and brothels for sleepless women who rattle
their household crickets
that
wood and the stone and the dead body of the forest keep you there
made dead
eternally young
that
one day you will sit still, without drama
between scrapings of letters and the fuzz of Egyptian vegetables
that you will bring to life the eyes the hip the day
calling yourself the Virgin who sews together drops that other girl
the throat the mouth the tongue
who also licks the hand of the wind
and leave your shelter guided by vigilant spirits
who file
lovingly
your fangs
like the daughter of Cioran the humorist, and Simone Buoé the one who laughed
with Cioran
the one who showed the mercy
of a vampire poet with pallid light
of ascetics shuttered in heroic pantheons like the fallen stones
of the moon
and you climb up
to the world
Suppose
you’ve abandoned love-hate’s language
and put
the saint in her place
Colaterales/Collateral Page 6