Residence on Earth (New Directions Paperbook) (14 page)

Oh girl among the roses, oh crush of doves,

oh fortress of fishes and rosebushes,

your soul is a bottle filled with thirsty salt

and your skin, a bell filled with grapes.

Unfortunately I have only fingernails to give you,

or eyelashes, or melted pianos,

or dreams that come spurting from my heart,

dusty dreams that run like black horsemen,

dreams filled with velocities and misfortunes.

I can love you only with kisses and poppies,

with garlands wet by the rain,

looking at ash-gray horses and yellow dogs.

I can love you only with waves at my back,

amid vague sulphur blows and brooding waters,

swimming against the cemeteries that flow in certain rivers

with wet fodder growing over the sad plaster tombs,

swimming across submerged hearts

and pale lists of unburied children.

There is much death, many funereal events

in my forsaken passions and desolate kisses,

there is the water that falls upon my head,

while my hair grows,

a water like time, a black unchained water,

with a nocturnal voice, with a shout

of birds in the rain, with an interminable

wet-winged shadow that protects my bones:

while I dress, while

interminably I look at myself in mirrors and windowpanes,

I hear someone who follows me, sobbing to me

with a sad voice rotted by time.

You stand upon the earth, fdled

with teeth and lightning.

You spread the kisses and kill the ants.

You weep with health, with onion, with bee,

with burning abacus.

You are like a blue and green sword

and you ripple, when I touch you, like a river.

Come to my heart dressed in white, with a bouquet

of bloody roses and goblets of ashes,

come with an apple and a horse,

because there is a dark room there and a broken candleholder,

some twisted chairs waiting for winter,

and a dead dove, with a number.

De pie como un cerezo sin cáscara ni flores,

especial, encendido, con venas y saliva,

y dedos y testículos,

miro una niña de papel y luna,

horizontal, temblando y respirando y blanca

y sus pezones como dos cifras separadas,

y la rosal reunion de sus piernas en donde

su sexo de pestañas nocturnas parpadea.

Pálido, desbordante,

siento hundirse palabras en mi boca,

palabras como niños ahogados,

y rumbo y rumbo y dientes crecen naves,

y aguas y latitud como quemadas.

La pondré como una espada o un espejo,

y abriré hasta la muerte sus piernas temerosas,

y morderé sus orejas y sus venas,

y haré que retroceda con los ojos cerrados

en un espeso río de semen verde.

La inundaré de amapolas y relámpagos,

la envolveré en rodillas, en labios, en agujas,

la entraré con pulgadas de epidermis llorando

y presiones de crimen y pelos empapados.

La haré huir escapándose por uñas y suspiros

hacia nunca, hacia nada,

trepándose a la lenta médula y al oxígeno,

agarrándose a recuerdos y razones

como una sola mano, como un dedo partido

agitando una uña de sal desamparada.

Debe correr durmiendo por caminos de piel

en un país de goma cenicienta y ceniza,

luchando con cuchillos, y sábanas, y hormigas,

y con ojos que caen en ella como muertos,

y con gotas de negra materia resbalando

como pescados ciegos o balas de agua gruesa.

Standing like a cherry tree without bark or flowers,

special, burning, with veins and saliva,

and fingers and testicles,

I look at a girl of paper and moon,

horizontal, trembling and breathing and white

and her nipples like two separated ciphers,

and the rosy meeting of her legs where

her mound flutters with nocturnal eyelashes.

Pale, overflowing,

I feel words sink into my mouth,

words like drowned children,

and on we go and ships grow teeth,

and waters and breadth as if on fire.

I shall place her like a sword or a mirror,

and I shall open until death her fearful legs,

and I shall bite her ears and her veins,

and I shall make her retreat, her eyes closed

in a thick river of green semen.

I shall flood her with poppies and lightningbolts,

I shall wrap her in knees, in lips, in needles,

I shall enter her with inches of weeping epidermis

and pressures of crime and soaked hair.

I shall make her flee escaping through fingernails and sighs

toward never, toward nothing,

climbing up the slow marrow and the oxygen,

clutching memories and reasons

like a single hand, like a cleft finger

waving a fingernail of forsaken salt.

She must run sleeping along roads of skin

in a country of ashen gum and ashes,

struggling with knives, and sheets, and ants,

and with eyes that fall on her like dead men,

and with drops of black substance slipping

like blind fish or bullets of thick water.

Rodando a goterones solos,

a gotas como dientes,

a espesos goterones de mermelada y sangre,

rodando a goterones,

cae el agua,

como una espada en gotas,

como un desgarrador río de vidrio,

cae mordiendo,

golpeando el eje de la simetría, pegando en las costuras del alma,

rompiendo cosas abandonadas, empapando lo oscuro.

Solamente es un soplo, más húmedo que el llanto,

un líquido, un sudor, un aceite sin nombre,

un movimiento agudo,

haciéndose, espesándose,

cae el agua,

a goterones lentos,

hacia su mar, hacia su seco océano,

hacia su ola sin agua.

Veo el verano extenso, y un estertor saliendo de un granero,

bodegas, cigarras,

poblaciones, estímulos,

habitaciones, niñas

durmiendo con las manos èn el corazón,

soñando con bandidos, con incendios,

veo barcos,

veo árboles de médula

erizados como gatos rabiosos,

veo sangre, puñales y medias de mujer,

y pelos de hombre,

veo camas, veo corredores donde grita una virgen,

veo frazadas y órganos y hoteles.

Veo los sueños sigilosos,

admito los postreros días,

y también los orígenes, y también los recuerdos,

como un párpado atrozmente levantado a la fuerza

estoy mirando.

Y entonces hay este sonido:

un ruido rojo de huesos,

un pegarse de carne,

y piernas amarillas como espigas juntándose.

Yo escucho entre el disparo de los besos,

escucho, sacudido entre respiraciones y sollozos.

Estoy mirando, oyendo,

con la mitad del alma en el mar y la mitad del alma en la tierra,

y con las dos mitades del alma miro al mundo.

Y aunque cierre los ojos y me cubra el corazón enteramente,

veo caer un agua sorda,

a goterones sordos.

Es como un huracán de gelatina,

como una catarata de espermas y medusas.

Veo correr un arco iris turbio.

Veo pasar sus aguas a través de los huesos.

Rolling in big solitary raindrops,

in drops like teeth,

in big thick drops of marmalade and blood,

rolling in big raindrops,

the water falls,

like a sword in drops,

like a tearing river of glass,

it falls biting,

striking the axis of symmetry, sticking to the seams of the soul,

breaking abandoned things, drenching the dark.

It is only a breath, moister than weeping,

a liquid, a sweat, a nameless oil,

a sharp movement,

forming, thickening,

the water falls,

in big slow raindrops,

toward its sea, toward its dry ocean,

toward its waterless wave.

I see the vast summer, and a death rattle coming from a granary,

stores, locusts,

towns, stimuli,

rooms, girls

sleeping with their hands upon their hearts,

dreaming of bandits, of fires,

I see ships,

I see marrow trees

bristling like rabid cats,

I see blood, daggers, and women’s stockings,

and men’s hair,

I see beds, I see corridors where a virgin screams,

I see blankets and organs and hotels.

I see the silent dreams,

I accept the final days,

and also the origins, and also the memories,

like an eyelid atrociously and forcibly uplifted

I am looking.

And then there is this sound:

a red noise of bones,

a clashing of flesh,

and yellow legs like merging spikes of grain.

I listen among the smack of kisses,

I listen, shaken between gasps and sobs.

I am looking, hearing,

with half my soul upon the sea and half my soul upon the land,

and with the two halves of my soul I look at the world.

And though I close my eyes and cover my heart entirely,

I see a muffled waterfall,

in big muffled raindrops.

It is like a hurricane of gelatine,

like a waterfall of sperm and jellyfish.

I see a turbid rainbow form.

I see its waters pass across the bones.

Con mi razón apenas,

con mis dedos, con lentas aguas lentas inundadas,

caigo al imperio de los nomeolvides,

a una tenaz atmósfera de luto,

a una olvidada sala decaída,

a un racimo de tréboles amargos.

Caigo en la sombra, en medio

de destruidas cosas,

y miro arañas, y apaciento bosques

de secretas maderas inconclusas,

y ando entre húmedas fibras arrancadas

al vivo ser de substancia y silencio.

Dulce materia, oh rosa de alas secas,

en mi hundimiento tus pétalos subo

con pies pesados de roja fatiga,

y en tu catedral dura me arrodillo

golpeándome los labios con un ángel.

Es que soy yo ante tu color de mundo,

ante tus pálidas espadas muertas,

ante tus corazones reunidos,

ante tu silenciosa multitud.

Soy yo ante tu ola de olores muriendo,

envueltos en otoño y resistencia:

soy yo emprendiendo un viaje funerario

entre tus cicatrices amarillas:

soy yo con mis lamentos sin origen,

sin alimentos, desvelado, solo,

entrando a oscurecidos corredores,

llegando a tu materia misteriosa.

Veo mo verse tus corrientes secas,

veo crecer manos interrumpidas,

oigo tus vegetales oceánicos

crujir de noche y furia sacudidos,

y siento morir hojas hacia adentro,

incorporando materiales verdes

a tu inmovilidad desamparada.

Poros, vetas, círculos de dulzura,

peso, temperatura silenciosa,

flechas pegadas a tu alma caída,

seres dormidos en tu boca espesa,

polvo de dulce pulpa consumida,

ceniza llena de apagadas almas,

venid a mí, a mi sueño sin medida,

caed en mi alcoba en que la noche cae

y cae sin cesar como agua rota,

y a vuestra vida, a vuestra muerte asidme,

y a vuestros materiales sometidos,

a vuestras muertas palomas neutrales,

y hagamos fuego, y silencio, y sonido,

y ardamos, y callemos, y campanas.

Scarcely with my reason, with my fingers,

with slow waters slow inundated,

I fall into the realm of the forget-me-nots,

into a tenacious atmosphere of mourning,

into a forgotten, decayed room,

into a cluster of bitter clover.

I fall into the shadow, amid

destroyed things,

and I look at spiders, and I graze on thickets

of secret inconclusive woods,

and I walk among moist fibers torn

from the living being of substance and silence.

Gentle matter, oh rose of dry wings,

in my collapse I climb up your petals,

my feet heavy with red fatigue,

and in your harsh cathedral I kneel

beating my lips with an angel.

I am the one facing your worldly color,

facing your pale dead swords,

facing your united hearts,

facing your silent multitude.

I am the one facing your wave of dying fragrances,

wrapped in autumn and resistance:

I am the one undertaking a funereal voyage

among your yellow scars:

I am the one with my sourceless laments,

foodless, abandoned, alone,

entering darkened corridors,

reaching your mysterious substance.

I see your dry currents move,

I see interrupted hands grow,

I hear your oceanic vegetation

rustle shaken by night and fury,

and I feel leaves dying inward,

joining green substances

to your forsaken immobility.

Pores, veins, circles of sweetness,

weight, silent temperature,

arrows piercing your fallen soul,

beings asleep in your thick mouth,

powder of sweet consumed pulp,

ashes filled with extinguished souls,

come to me, to my measureless dream,

fall into my bedroom where night falls

and endlessly falls like broken water,

and bind me to your life and to your death,

and to your docile substances,

to your dead neutral doves,

and let us make fire, and silence, and sound,

and let us burn, and be silent, and bells.