ETERNAL RETURN
I ask you, love,
if this Love is different from others,
or if it is Love that repeats itself in every love
like Plato's Rose or Borges' Rose,
always the same Rose of roses,
that are born and die ceaselessly,
like the same War of wars
or like the same Man of all men.
Is it not true that this love was already written
in poems and in songs
found like a eco of the past
where this love already insinuated
a precise form
before, after being this
disproportionate and living emotion,
of right now?
And it is possible that someday somebody
reading this poem
may also feel the ambiguous consolation of knowing
that it's also their love our love that repeats itself.
just like our love,
so new in this world,
it's also a very old story.
And perhaps, like us,
they will also refuse to believe
that Love knew other loves
as great as theirs,
just like the Rose knew roses as beautiful
as the one which has just flowered in the garden.
DEAD TIME
My only occupation is not to be occupied.
Be the owner of the time
that spins the wheel
of contradictions
and turns around the natural
tidiness of tiredness.
Become more of a child:
die increasingly less
and love you more until I am born,
after having lived,
to live you again.
NEW LIFE
The day I decided to start a healthier life
(without books, without family, without friends)
I was fiercely attacked by my own dog.
THE WOMEN IN LOVE
You came to me accompanied by beautiful women
who were crying on the floor,
beautiful women who still waited for you
to show you their letters of intent of suicide,
beautiful women who used to call in the middle of the night
begging for your return.
I was just over twenty
and I was the betrayer of all these women
who would have also betrayed me.
More childish and stronger and less fearful
I would see their figures run over your sleeping eyelids
like an omen's shadows.
And I would see you shiver in pain for the lost loves
who were longing for you
as the first day after the first encounter,
in spite of being forgotten.
Fear is contagious.
It has hands that graze your face while you are sleeping
and only in dreams do you know it.
It has teeth that pull your eyelashes one by one,
after that, no one knows you.
In dreams, I know that the girl I was comes to meet you
and I -as all those women who spent entire days inventing me a face-
am left alone.
And then the women in love arrive.
And they embrace me.
And they know, in dreams only, that it is also in their name that I loved you.
THE ESCAPE
My love looks for what he has already found
as if it did not belong to him yet.
Nights escape from the nights he sleeps with me
as water escapes always from water.
Some evenings he holds my hand,
and stares at me, and does not recognise me.
Some evenings he lives very far away from me
besides me,
and he misses me
and chases me
as streets always chase for other streets, never to reach them.
Then he returns to me with a familiar smile;
because some evenings my love longs
for what he has never lived,
for a future he has remembered since ever
and is now reaching him,
while he looks for what he has found
without looking for it,
as water always finds water.
From Perder la Muerte (To Lose Death), Puerta del Mar, Málaga, 2006.
GENESIS
All fish carry seas in their mouths
and what is the sea if not just an open mouth
and a night that wants to be made of water
so that the day may be submerged in her and all may be in the end,
like it was at the beginning: a single voice.
Yes and no, you and I, everything and nothing, light and shade.
ALADIN´S LAMP
For me, joy is this hunger for eating parks.
Of running through walls
and, transformed in crazy love
be the missile that drills
the forest made of wigs
which scarcely holds the Great Old Theatre.
Joy is this will to lick the Antartic
and melt it in my mouth
as if it were an ice cream,
and let the tongue burn with the coldness, who cares,
if it is the height of summer and there is a crypt underground
where two people have locked themselves up
to sip, naked, their dampness
far away from the cicadas.
For me, joy is this hunger for eating parks.
Also, under the hotels
there are subterranean passages
where white cooks and cleaning ladies
walk around spreading old songs
that tourists will sing later in the shower,
clueless about where they came from.
Joy is this thirst for drinking everything the eyes see
and for whistling its heat through the ears
while, at the bar,
a bottle explodes and wets the newspaper
where they inform us that London Ferris Wheel has run away
and, eager to see the world,
rolls on fire over the Atlantic Ocean.
And so on and so forth…
Itinerant circuses go round
and a tiger that was returned to the jungle
cries out
and no one finds it strange
that it is enough to mention the name
of the most remote blind alley in the outskirts of the city
for any absentminded cabdriver
to lead you there without hesitation.
Due to god-knows- what miracle
or a combustion of organic particles
whale bones shine in the depths
where the sun has stopped
advertising itself in colours
over the skin of fishes.
And I, in the same world,
meantime
strike in the centre of my stomach
images as fireworks
one on top of the other,
entwine their lights...
And joy, switched on,
shines around me
as a mine of precious stones
shines around the amazed explorer
who, after the long journey
full of dangers and adventures,
finally lifts his lamp.
PARADISE, PARADISE
Please look at your hands. It's an experiment.
Go over the assemblage of bones and the skin that covers them
And all of Darwin's theory of evolution synthesized
In that amazing diversity of fingers of different shapes and sizes.
The smooth down that skips the knuckles.
The implacable certainty of the nails.
Touch them, do whatever you like, you can even afford
to tighten with extreme delicacy your index finger or thumb.
Check how the blood blushes its natural whiteness.
And now, without ceasing to look at your hands, visualise your own death.
It may be sudden. Perhaps tomorrow.
Or even in thirty-five years time.
How long is all of that time detained in this very moment,
Or even in this very moment in thirty-five years time?
From the balcony of the present, lean out into yourself
To check how life is the most fleeting
And strange of phenomena.
Look at that boy sitting on the street.
The balcony, suddenly transformed into a lift,
Plummets to the ground
And the child that you were – now can you make out his delicate features?-
Looks at you from so close
That the years that have moved you away from him
Are reduced to the glint of a dagger
Which penetrates your ribs with all the nastiness
Of the worst joke ever.
Perhaps your death will arrive following a nice shower
And after shaving yourself with special care. An inexplicable heart attack
will freeze your glance in the mirror.
and that will be the last glance. And you will know,
While you slide to the floor passed the coldness of the sink.
Lean out into yourself from the balcony of the present
And observe with the meticulousness of a detective
The scene of your own passing.
A miniscule bubble of foam on the shelf.
The porcelain soap-dish with a pink flower in the centre.
A line of hair on the left cheek
Of your own recently shaved face.
The shopping list sticking out of the pocket of your jacket.
Two kilos of potatoes.
A packet of bacon.
Mandarines.
Half a breast of chicken.
You yourself, now lying on the floor,
With this stupid sensation of having forgotten something primordial,
And not being capable of recalling it.
The tap of the bathtub, that was not fully turned off, sounds, after your fall, deafening.
And you go on without recalling, and go back to looking at your hands.
You have to know.
All that time, a few verses back
That you were playing with them
You were in paradise.
You will understand if you are capable of thinking about it from the bathroom floor.
Install yourself if necessary on the bathroom floor
Where you have just died
Without time stopping its rhythmic walk never to return.