Residence on Earth (New Directions Paperbook) (9 page)

Distance sheltered upon tubes of foam,

salt in ritual waves and defined orders,

and the smell and murmur of an old ship,

of rotten planks and broken tools,

and weary machines that howl and weep,

pushing the prow, kicking the sides,

chewing laments, swallowing, swallowing distances,

making a noise of bitter waters upon the bitter waters,

moving the ancient ship upon the ancient waters.

Inner vaults, twilight tunnels

visited by the intermittent day of the ports:

sacks, sacks accumulated by a somber god,

like gray animals, round and eyeless,

with sweet gray ears,

and estimable bellies filled with wheat or copra,

sensitive paunches of pregnant women

shabbily dressed in gray, patiently

waiting in the shadow of a dreary movie house.

The outer waters suddenly

are heard passing, running like an opaque horse,

with a noise of horsehoofs on the water,

swift, plunging again into the waters.

There is then nothing more than time in the cabins:

time in the ill-fated solitary dining room,

motionless and visible like a great misfortune.

The smell of leather and cloth worn to shreds,

and onions, and olive oil, and even more,

the smell of someone floating in the corners of the ship,

the smell of someone nameless

who comes down the ladders like a wave of air,

and crosses through corridors with his absent body,

and observes with his eyes preserved by death.

He observes with his colorless, sightless eyes,

slowly, and he passes trembling, without presence or shadow:

noises wrinkle him, things pierce him,

his transparency makes the dirty chairs gleam.

Who is that ghost without a ghostly body,

with his steps light as nocturnal flour

and his voice sponsored only by things?

The furniture moves along filled with his silent being

like little ships inside the old ship,

laden with his faint and uncertain being:

the closets, the green covers of the tables,

the color of the curtains and the floor,

everything has suffered the slow emptiness of his hands,

and his breathing has wasted things away.

He slides and slips, he descends transparent,

air in the cold air that runs across the ship,

with his hidden hands he leans against the railings

and looks at the angry sea that flees behind the ship.

Only the waters reject his influence,

his color and his smell of forgotten ghost,

and fresh and deep they develop their dance

like fiery lives, like blood or perfume,

new and strong they surge, joined and rejoined.

The waters, inexhaustible, without custom or time,

green in quantity, efficient and cold,

touch the black stomach of the ship and wash

its matter, its broken crusts, its iron wrinkles:

the living waters gnaw at the ship’s shell,

trafficking its long banners of foam

and its salt teeth flying in drops.

The ghost looks at the sea with his eyeless face:

the circle of the day, the cough of the ship, a bird

in the round and solitary equation of space,

and he descends again to the life of the ship,

falling upon dead time and wood,

slipping in the black kitchens and cabins,

slow with air and atmosphere and desolate space.

Oh maligna, ya habrás hallado la carta, ya
habrás

llorado de furia,

y habrás insultado el recuerdo de mi madre,

llamándola perra podrida y madre de perros,

ya habrás bebido sola, solitaria, el té del artardecer

mirando mis viejos zapatos vacíos para siempre,

y ya no podrás recordar mis enfermedades, mis sueños

nocturnos, mis comidas,

sin maldecirme en voz alta como si estuviera allí aún

quejándome del trópico, de los
coolies corringhis,

de las venenosas fiebres que me hicieron tanto daño

y de los espantosos ingleses que odio todavía.

Maligna, la verdad, qué noche tan grande, qué tierra tan sola!

He llegado otra vez a los dormitorios solitarios,

a almorzar en los restaurantes comida fría, y otra vez

tiro al suelo los pantalones y las camisas,

no hay perchas en mi habitación, ni retratos de nadie

en las paredes.

Cuánta sombra de la que hay en mi alma daría por

recobrarte,

y qué amenazadores me parecen los nombres de los meses,

y la palabra invierno qué sonido de tambor lúgubre tiene.

Enterrado junto al cocotero hallarás más tarde

el cuchillo que escondí allí por temor de que me mataras,

y ahora repentinamente quisiera oler su acero de cocina

acostumbrado al peso de tu mano y al brillo de tu pie:

bajo la humedad de la tierra, entre las sordas raíces,

de los lenguajes humanos el pobre sólo sabría

tu nombre,

y la espesa tierra no comprende tu nombre

hecho de impenetrables substancias divinas.

Así como me aflige pensar en el claro día de tus piernas

recostadas como detenidas y duras aguas solares,

y la golondrina que durmiendo y volando vive en tus ojos,

y el perro de furia que asilas en el corazón,

así también veo las muertes que están entre nosotros desde
ahora,

y respiro en el aire la ceniza y lo destruido,

el largo, solitario espacio que me rodea para siempre.

Daría este viento de mar gigante por tu brusca respiración

oída en largas noches sin mezcla de olvido,

uniéndose a la atmósfera como el látigo a la piel del
caballo.

Y por oírte orinar, en la oscuridad, en el fondo de

la casa,

como vertiendo una miel delgada, trémula, argentina, obstinada,

cuántas veces entregaría este coro de sombras que

poseo,

y el ruido de espadas inútiles que se oye en mi alma,

y la paloma de sangre que está solitaria en mi frente

llamando cosas desaparecidas, seres desaparecidos,

substancias extrañamente inseparables y perdidas.

Oh evil one, you must by now have found the letter, you
must

have wept with fury,

and you must have insulted my mother’s memory,

calling her rotten bitch and mother of dogs,

you must have drunk alone, all by yourself, your twilight tea,

looking at my old shoes forever empty,

and you won’t be able any longer to recall my illnesses, my

night dreams, my meals,

without cursing me aloud as if I were still there,

complaining about the tropics, about the
corringhis
coolies,

about the poisonous fevers that did me so much harm,

and about the frightful Englishmen that I still hate.

Evil one, really, what an enormous night, what a lonely earth!

I have come again to the solitary bedrooms,

to lunch on cold food in the restaurants, and again

I throw my trousers and shirts upon the floor,

there are no coat hangers in my room, no pictures of anyone

on the walls.

How much of the darkness in my soul I would give to get

you back,

and how threatening to me seem the names of the months,

and the word “winter,” what a mournful drum sound it has.

Buried next to the cocoanut tree you will later find

the knife that I hid there for fear that you would kill me,

and now suddenly I should like to smell its kitchen steel

accustomed to the weight of your hand and the shine of your foot:

under the moisture of the earth, among the deaf roots,

of all human languages the poor thing would know only

your name,

and the thick earth does not understand your name made

of impenetrable and divine substances.

Just as it afflicts me to think of the clear day of your legs

curled up like still and harsh solar waters,

and the swallow that sleeping and flying lives in your eyes,

and the furious dog that you shelter in your heart,

so too I see the deaths that are between us from now on,

and I breathe in the air ashes and destruction,

the long, solitary space that surrounds me forever.

I would give this giant sea wind for your brusque breath

heard in long nights with no mixture of oblivion,

merging with the atmosphere like the whip with the horse’s hide.

And to hear you making water in the darkness, at the back of

the house,

as if spilling a thin, tremulous, silvery, persistent honey,

how many times would I give up this chorus of shadows that

I possess,

and the noise of useless swords that is heard in my heart,

and the bloody dove that sits alone on my brow

calling for vanished things, vanished beings,

substances strangely inseparable and lost.

La parracial rosa devora

y sube a la cima del santo:

con espesas garras sujeta

el tiempo al fatigado ser:

hincha y sopla en las venas duras,

ata el cordel pulmonar, entonces

largamente escucha y respira.

Morir deseo, vivir quiero,

herramienta, perro infinito,

movimiento de océano espeso

con vieja y negra superficie.

Para quién y a quién en la sombra

mi gradual guitarra resuena

naciendo en la sal de mi ser

como el pez en la sal del mar?

Ay, qué continuo país cerrado,

neutral, en la zona del fuego,

inmóvil, en el giro terrible,

seco, en la humedad de las cosas.

Entonces, entre mis rodillas,

bajo la raíz de mis ojos,

prosigue cosiendo mi alma:

su aterradora aguja trabaja.

Sobrevivo en medio del mar,

solo y tan locamente herido,

tan solamente persistiendo,

heridamente abandonado.

The parracial rose devours

and climbs to the peak of the saint:

with thick claws it fastens

time to the wearied being:

it swells and blows in the hard veins,

it ties the pulmonary cord, then

lengthily it listens and breathes.

I wish to die, I want to live,

tool, infinite dog,

thick ocean movement

with an old and black surface.

For whom and to whom in the shadow

does my gradual guitar resound,

being born in the salt of my being

like the fish in the salt of the sea?

Ah, what a continuous closed country,

neutral, in the zone of fire,

motionless, in the terrible spinning,

dry, in the moistness of things.

Then, between my knees,

beneath the root of my eyes,

my soul pursues its sewing:

its terrifying needle at work.

I survive in the midst of the sea,

alone and so crazily wounded,

so solely persisting,

woundedly abandoned.

Dime, del tiempo, resonando

en tu esfera parcial y dulce,

no oyes acaso el sordo gemido?

No sientes de lenta manera,

en trabajo trémulo y ávido,

la insistente noche que vuelve?

Secas sales y sangres aéreas,

atropellado correr de ríos,

temblando el testigo constata.

Aumento oscuro de paredes,

crecimiento brusco de puertas,

delirante población de estímulos,

circulaciones implacables.

Alrededor, de infinito modo,

en propaganda interminable,

de hocico armado y definido,

el espacio hierve y se puebla.

No oyes la constante victoria,

en la carrera de los seres,

del tiempo, lento como el fuego,

seguro y espeso y hercúleo,

acumulando su volumen

y añadiendo su triste hebra?

Como una planta perpetua, aumenta

su delgado y pálido hilo,

mojado de gotas que caen

sin sonido, en la soledad.

Tell me, of time, resounding

in your partial and gentle sphere,

do you not hear perhaps the muffled moan?

Do you not feel in slow fashion,

in tremulous and avid work,

the insistent night returning?

To dry salts and airy bloods,

to headlong rush of rivers,

the trembling witness testifies.

Dark increase of walls,

brusque growth of doors,

delirious population of stimuli,

implacable circulations.

Roundabout, infinitely,

in interminable propaganda,

with armed and defined snout,

space seethes and peoples itself.

Do you not hear the constant victory,

in the human footrace,

of time, slow as fire,

sure and thick and Herculean,

accumulating its volume

and adding its sad fiber?

Like a perpetual plant, its thin

and pallid thread increases,

soaked by drops that fall,

soundless, in solitude.