DEFEAT
I who have never had a trade
who have felt weak facing every competitor
who lost the best titles for life
who barely arrive somewhere and already want to leave
(believing that moving is a
solution)
who have been denied in anticipation and ridiculed by
the most able
who lean against the walls so I won’t completely collapse
who am a target of laughter even for myself
who thought my father was eternal
who have been humiliated by professors of literature
who one day asked how I could help and the answer was a
loud laugh
who will never be able to start a home, nor be brilliant, nor
triumph in life
who have been abandoned by many people because I barely
speak
who am ashamed of acts I haven’t committed
who have needed little incentive to start running down
the street
who have lost a center I never had
who have become the laughing stock of so many people for
living in limbo
who never found anyone who would put up with me
who was omitted in favor of people more miserable than me
who will spend my whole life like this and who next year
will be mocked many more times
for my ridiculous
ambition
who am tired of receiving advice from others more lethargic
than me (“You’re so slow, get
with it, wake up”)
who will never be able to travel to India
who have received favors without giving anything in return
who traverse the city from one end to another like a feather
who let myself be pulled along by others
who have no personality and don’t want to have one
who muffle my rebellion all day
who haven't joined the guerrillas
who haven’t done anything for my people
who don’t belong to the FALN and all these things and others
whose enumeration would be interminable
make me
desperate
who cannot escape my prison
who have been dismissed everywhere for being useless
who actually haven’t been able to get married or go to Paris
or have a serene day
who refuse to acknowledge facts
who always drool on my story
who am an imbecile and more than an imbecile from birth
who lost the thread of the discourse being executed within me
and I haven’t been able to find
it
who don’t cry when I feel the desire to do so
who arrive late to everything
who have been ruined by so many marches and
countermarches
who desire perfect immobility and impeccable speed
who am not what I am nor what I am not
who despite everything maintain a satanic pride even if
at certain hours I’ve been humble
to the point of
bringing myself to the level
of stones
who have lived in the same circle for fifteen years
who thought I was predestined for something beyond
the everyday and have achieved
nothing
who will never wear a tie
who can’t find my body
who have perceived my falsehood in lightning flashes and
haven’t been able to topple
myself, sweep away
everything and create my indolence,
my flotation,
my wandering a new freshness,
and obstinately
commit suicide within arm’s
reach
I will get up off the ground even more ridiculous to keep
mocking others and myself until
the day of final
judgment.
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NEW WORLD
1
I
have burned the formulas. I stopped performing exorcisms. My legacy,
the ancient power, remains distant. Bonfire’s breath in my nostrils,
my disintegrated language, the still-humid shadow of a dilemma.
Another
life proceeds in darkness like a vein of water.
The
entire displacement has existed in order to exile me, to live within
another articulation.
2
Dawn
papers. They always refer to the adopted homeland, the one I have given
myself. Papers piled up as though for ceremony.
Sacrifice
to an ebony god.
3
Those
invariable writings.
I
always return to the same language. Leather haunted by an animal. A
fugitive, though present like an ancestor’s life. Weaving over weaving,
love’s dead tongue, a fire which has made me an addict of an insinuating
cult.
4
The
dawn does not return my final amulet. An old man signals from a beach.
I try to return to the springs, but I don’t know the road.
5
My
shadow enters.
It
brings a serpent, a buffalo, a woman, a house, a pier.
The
intoxication of savage copper.
Advance,
advance.
Drug.
Overpowers
what I observe.
Begins
to mark here and there, everything.
Then
escapes to join the animal.
Lost
like a bird amid leaves.
6
Memory
embarks in search of escaped things. Possessions belonging less to their
owner than to air. What a wooden chest wants to protect was not born
for words. I am the only one who labors to steal it from the eyes.
What
tongue will bring forth the treasures without touching them?
In
the depths a sick king watches my departure.
I
hand him a box with an anxious ruby.
7
I
proceed, making way through the roughness, toward the spot where my
future portrait is kept.
8
A
remote fire sustains me. I borrow from its red aura.
Hallway
toward incandescence, you deny installments.
9
Vegetable
orgy.
A
naked woman lies beneath the rain.
Textures
where an absence watches itself.
Guide
me, aromatic cave.
10
Traces
never recovered.
Suddenly,
a graze. The universe of the skin. The thread lost on the journey.
I
am bathed by what lives, by what dies.
Each
day is the first day, each night the first night and myself, I am also
the first resident.
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