Blind Panorama of New York




If there are no birds,
if there are no birds covered in ash,
if there are no twins who beat on the windows at the wedding
there will be delicate creatures of the air
that unleash the new blood by an untiring darkness.
Because the birds are at the point of becoming oxen;
they can be white rocks with the help of the moon
and there are always wounded girls
before whom judges lift the curtain.
Everyone understands the pain that enters with Death
but the true pain is absent in the spirit,
it is not in the air of our lives,
nor in the terraces filled with smoke;
the true pain that sustains awake those things
is a small infinite burn
in innocent eyes of other systems.

An abandoned suit weighs heavily on the shoulders
such that at times the sky
groups them together in rough crowds
and those that die at birth know in the final hour
that all sound is stone and each footprint beaten.
We ignore that the thought has outskirts
where the philosopher is devoured by slaves and caterpillars
and some idiot children have encountered by the kitchens
small vagabonds with suitcases
who knew how to pronounce the word love.
 
No, there are no birds.
there is no bird that can express the fever of the lagoon
nor the aching of the murdered that oppresses us at every moment,
nor the metallic sound of suicide that animates us
         at daybreak;
there is a capsule of air where the entire world pains us,
there is a small space insane with the unison of light,
there is an indefinable scale where clouds and roses forget
the shouting slave who boils at the quays of
          blood.

Many times I have lost myself
searching for the burn that keeps these things
           alive
and I’ve only come to know sailors thrown against
           railings
and only creatures of the sky buried under snow
but the pain that was in other plazas
where the crystallized fish agonized in the
            trunks,
the plazas of a strange sky for antique statues unharmed
and for the tender intimacy of volcanos.

There is no pain in the voice.  All that exists is the earth.
The earth and its everlasting ports that carry the blush
              of fruit.






Federico Garcia Lorca