This



This
happened between two eyelids; I trembled
in my sheath, choleric, alkaline,
standing with the slippery equinox,
at the foot of the cold I ignite a fire in which I come to an end.
Alkaline skid, I will utter,
much closer to the garlic cloves over the sense of syrup,
further inside, much further, into the rust,
to the flowing of water and the return of the wave.

Alkaline skid
again and grandly, in the colossal montage of the sky.

What darts and harpoons I shall hurl, if I die
in my sheath; I will give my five subordinate little bones
in leaves of sacred plantain,
and in the glance, this same glance!
(They say that in breaths they will be able
to build bony accordions, tactile;
they say that when they die like that those who come to an end,
ay!  they die out of reach of the clock, the hand
clasped on a singular shoe.)

Understanding that and everything, colonel
and all, in the crying sense of this voice,
I make my suffering, I extract sadly,
by night, my nails;
later I have nothing and I speak alone,
I go over my semesters,
and to fill my vertebra, I touch myself.


Cesar Vallejo

                    Moment in Harmony



On the following day of the following day
The sunset was as familiar as the murmur of
     despairing hairs
It was as timid as a tie
Facing the earth that knows not how to
      shut itself in
And that never had been able to slough off its sound
Not even in the night that suspends itself like a breath
Nor in that day’s minute that minute of four meters
Like an old man who of a sudden is filled with infinity

On the following day of the following dove
I told you that you were rain for pressuring time
I told you that you had a smile of darkened wind
I also know that you are given to hands of certain stars
With the affability of eyes that surround you
But when the day comes from the distance and from its
      proper depth
Then we will speak
I know that the sea distinguishes you and prefers you
That you see your tranquil lamps under your skin and your
      mirage-like fountains
This sleeping lake that creates your persona

And until these herbs that you awake to be born in my heart
On the following day of the following color
You found tree-like things and emblems of glass
       with sheltered lights
Surely at a distance like small-grained sand
       on children’s feet
You bit the emptiness enamored of its attitudes
Greater than our two joined spirits
More powerful than my eyes concentrated on your body
And even the preoccupied day of your hands

From your color that grows like the pealing of a bell
From your words surrounded by doves of your light of flesh
      and bone your light
In your longing to know how to walk and how to die
In order to be frightened of time alien of the stars

On the following day of the following year
You submitted to forgetting like a river that discerns its agony
That sees death coming and leaves at the encounter
Closing your eyelids in order not to repent in time



Vicente Huidobro

                                          Now





The sky shakes out her blouses and counts the years in her voice
Counts the stones hurled at her chest
And the trees in their sarcophagi twisting the trails
Thinks of her flesh that quivers
At the hearing of this duo of nights so diametrically opposed
At the hearing of ages that is her age
Like flowers that come and go

The night settles in to hear the sky
Under the water that augments from the sobs of fishes
And everyone waits with open pores
The apparition of beauty over feet of foam
Between two strikes of lightning her mouth below
Behind the last breath without space in
          space
And over the trembling halo of hands that draw back
          the days
Hour after hour descending by the fever of her eyelids
The secret apparition causing the earth to tremble
The apparition that goes down lowering its eyes.



Vicente Huidobro

                    October




When all the dreams had died
and all the cars had crushed my lamp my bread
in mid-Autumn’s rain an empty night
you emerged you lost and scared
I accompanied you through dark alleys
under the water the leaves falling the ground was full
of yellow shadows
The two of us were sad
the two of us began to walk
unknown far away deep shoulder to shoulder
while drops of rain and joy were falling over
        our heads

Girl of water in your eyes a bitter tenderness
seeing off doves of fear messenger doves
that come to sleep silently in my soul
All the lost hours all the disasters
went falling behind You were there
in the middle of the night with something of a lamp in your hair
        in your voice

I don’t know you don’t know what dust your clarity is made of
and you are now like the star that has forever drowned
         in my blood



Fayad Jamis

                       
                    The Little Paper Boat




In a little paper boat the grey afternoon sky heads
    toward shipwreck
little boat filled with caramels of thieves and the mutilated
It all occurred in the garden lake of Luxembourg
when an old man sat to read his newspaper
Shame that the misers the barracks continued
    in the earth
The statues of Grand Generals the statues of Kings
the makers of coffins
Over the earth where the reeds and the grain flashed
      like lightning
You wont tell me let’s go already it’s time
or over here is the black and reddened surf of the shipwreck
Our bones should wait
for the chrysalis to cover them
here in this world of broken windows
Ties were invented to hang
the dogs haven’t come solely to bark
but to see in the darkness
From each shipwreck jumps a rock
so that the world can arrive


Fayad Jamis

                  Finite Theory





Poetry leaves the mouth
Thought leaves the head
Smoke leaves the egg
And the egg leaves the oyster

The page leaves the book
The book leaves the store
The worker leaves the factory
And the factory leaves the trees

I leave a blue country
And the organ of a horse
My mother left a petal
And a living owl

Language leaves the arms
And the furnishings of paradise
The boat leaves the seas
And the seas an old song

You leave the mother’s cell
And of death a great illness
Death leaves the night
And the daily malaria

Light leaves and enters and leaves
Behind the wings of houses
And she will leave this world
Carrying death in her head



Carlos Edmundo de Ory

                                      Rome




Apples lightly wounded
by fine silver swords,
clouds cloven by coral hands
that carry on their back an almond of fire,
arsenic fishes like sharks,
sharks with blotches of tears to blind a multitude,
roses that wound
and needles installed in gutters of blood,
enemy worlds and loves covered in worms
will fall over you.

They will fall over the grand dome
that rubs with sacred oil the military tongues,
there where a man urinates on a startling dove
and spits crushed carbon
surrounded by thousands of little bells.

Because now there is no one who can share the bread and wine
nor who can cultivate herbs in the mouth of a dead man,
nor who can unwind the threads of repose,
nor who can cry for the elephants’ wounds.
There are not more than a million blacksmiths
forging chains for the children who must come.
There are not more than a million carpenters
who craft coffins without crosses.
There are not crowds of laments
which pull back the ropes in anticipation of the ball.
The man who urinates on the dove should have spoken.
He should have cried naked amidst the columns
and given himself an injection to catch leprosy
and cry a sob so terrible
that it would dissolve his rings and his diamond telephones.
But the man dressed in white
ignores the mystery of the corn stalk,
ignores the twin of the woman in labor,
ignores that Christ can still give water,
ignores that the coin burns the kiss of the prodigy
and spills oxen blood at the idiotic beak of the pheasant.

The maestros teach the children
of a marvelous light that comes from the mountain;
but what arrives is a reunion of sewers
where the dark nymphs of cholera scream.
The maestros signal with devotion the enormous
      healing domes
but beneath the statues there is no love,
there is no love under the eyes of certain crystal.
Love is in the flesh torn asunder by thirst
and in the tiny shack that fights its inundation.

Love is in the ditches where serpents fight from
      hunger,
in the sorrowful sea that stirs the seagulls’ cadavers
and in the pure darkness a sharp kiss beneath pillows.
But the old man with translucent hands
will say:  love, love, love,
claimed for the millions of the moribund;
will say:  love, love, love,
in the stretched tissue of tenderness;
will say:  peace, peace, peace,
in the shiver of knives and manes of dynamite;
will say:  love, love, love,
until they seal his lips with silver.

In the meanwhile,
the blacks who recover their spittoons,
the young men who tremble under the pallid terror
      of the directors,
the women drowned in mineral oils,
the throngs of hammer, violin, or cloud
must scream though their brains are scattered on the wall,
must scream in front of the domes,
must scream insane with fire,
must scream insane with snow,
must scream with heads full of shit,
must scream with the joining of nights,
until the cities tremble like girls
and tear at oil deposits and music.

Because we want our daily bread
flower of the alder tree and perennial tenderness threshed;
because we want the fulfillment of the Earth’s will
that gives to everyone its fruits.



Federico Garcia Lorca

                                      Living Sky


I will not be able to complain
if I am unable to find what I was searching for.
Near the rocks without juice and empty insects
I will not see the duel of the sun
with the creatures of living flesh.

But I will go to the first landscape
of shocks, liquids, and sounds
that flow to a boy recently born
and where all the surface is evaded
so that I can understand what I looked for, what is
a whiteness of joy when I can fly mixed with love and sand.

You can’t advance but for the swarms of corollas
since the air dissolves your sugary teeth,
nor can you caress the fleeting fern’s leaf
without feeling the absolute amazement of ivory.

There the starch of closed eyes doesn’t arrive,
nor the howl of the tree murdered by the caterpillar.
There all the shapes guard mixed together
a solitary expression frenetic in advance.

There beneath the roots and in the marrow of the air
one understands the truth of mistaken things,
the swimmer of nickel who lies in wait for the finest wave
and the nocturnal herd of cows with the red little pads of women.

I will not be able to complain
if I am unable to find what I was searching for
but I will go to the first landscape of humidity and throbbing
to understand what I looked for, what is
a whiteness of joy when I fly mixed with love and sand.

I fly fresh forever over empty beds,
over groupings of wind and quieted boats.
I stumble vacillating between a hard fixed eternity
and a love at last without dawn.  Love.  Love visible!



Federico Garcia Lorca

                                      Crucifixion


                                                                                 For Miguel Benitez



The moon could stop itself at last through the ultra-white curve
            of the horses.
A ray of violet light that escaped the wound
projected in the sky the instant of a dead child’s
            circumcision.

The blood poured down the mountain and the angels searched for it
but the chalices were of wind and at last they could fill its shoes.
Lame dogs smoked their pipes and a hot leather
             pain
made grey the rounded lips of those who vomited
             in the corners.
And great howlings arrived from the south in an arid night.
And the moon burned with its candles the horses’
             phallus.
A tailor, specialist in purple,
buried the three female saints
and tutored a skull by the window’s glass.
Three boys in the slums circled around a white camel
that cried astonished because at dawn
it must pass without remedy through the eye of a needle.
Oh cross!  Oh nails!  Oh thorn!
Oh cleaved thorn in the bone waiting for the planets to
              oxidize!
Since no one could turn their head, the sky could unmask.
And then one could hear the great voice and the Pharisees said:
-- That damned cow has teats full of milk.

The throng closed shut the doors
and the rain fell in the streets determined to moisten the heart
while the afternoon became turgid with beatings and woodcutters
and the dark city agonized under the hammers
            of carpenters.
-- That damned cow
has teats of buckshot --,
said the Pharisees.
But the blood wet their feet and the filthy spirits
shattered blisters of lagoons over the walls
            of the temple.
We knew the precise moment of the salvation of our
             lives
because the moon washed the horses’ burns
             with water.
And so the cold ones left singing their songs
and the frogs ignited their tinderbox along the double banks
             of the river.
-- That damned cow, damned, damned,
will not let us sleep --, said the Pharisees,
and they left their houses for the tumult of the street,
pushing aside drunks and spitting salt
             of the sacrificed
while the blood followed them with the bleat of a lamb.


                                           *


It was so
and the earth awoke hurling tremulous moth rivers.




Federico Garcia Lorca

                                     With All Respect





    Trees, women and children
they are all the same:  Depth.
The voices, the caresses, the tidiness, the joy,
this knowing that at the end we are all each other.
Yes!  The ten fingers that I watch.

    Now the Sun is not horrendous like a well-placed cheek;
It isn’t a gown, or a voiceless lantern.
Nor is it the response you hear with bent knee,
or that difficulty of touching the borders with the whitest
     of eyes.
It is now the Sun the truth, the clarity, the constancy.
You chat with the mountain,
you exchange it for your heart:
You can follow stepping lightly.
The fish eye if we arrive at the river
 is just, the image of the joy that God prepares for us,
the ardent kiss that breaks our bones.

    Yes.  At the end it is life.  Oh, what egglike beauty
this spacious gift the valley builds for us,
this limitation where you can lean your head
to hear the best music, that of distant planets.

    Let us go quickly,
let us approach the bonfire.
Your petaled hands and mine of shells,
these delicious improvisations that we reveal to ourselves,
they are worthy for burning, for keeping confidence
    in tomorrow,
so the conversation can go on ignoring the dress.
I ignore the gown.  And you?
Dressed in three-hundred robes or hemp,
enveloped in my most vulgar gowns,
I conserve the dignity of the aurora and the bragging of the naked.

  If you caress me I will believe a storm
        is brewing  
and I will ask if the rays are of seven colors.
Or at best I will be thinking in the air
and in this light breeze that ruffles the defenseless skin.

    With the tip of my foot I don’t laugh,
better that I conserve my dignity,
and if I move across the stage I do so like a master,
like the most unwary little ant.

     And so by morning or afternoon
when the crowds arrive I salute with a gesture,
and I don’t reveal my heel because that is a vulgarity.
And so, I smile at them, I offer them my hand,
I let go a thought, an iridescent butterfly,
while I seal my protest turning into manure.



Vicente Aleixandre

                                    Suicide




Sad crystal flesh intangible to the crowd.
A light that shines like a lying breast.
Here by the moon my voice is truthful.
Listen to me gone quiet though the blade drowns you.

    I was that young man who one day
leaving the depths of his eyes
 sought truthful fish
 he could not see through his hands.

    Hands of eight mountains,
confabulation of stone,
pain of blood in cliff face
insensible to the teeth.

    Under the stars on point
there are screams that approach.
Under my coiled heart
mute tongues explode.

    Open the world to me, open;
I want to illuminate just a kiss,
some lips that irritate
heartless trees.

    There are hanging legs
sheltered by birds.
Come strange bridges
that tie together two muscles.

    An expiring shock
utters its unusual voice
and the feet by the torsos
aspire to the cup.

    Lights of the armpits, lights,
lights in the form of ankles,
and that narrow waist
that pierces the moon.

    The eyes are caresses of the wind,
they are a pain that will be forgotten shortly,
so the hairs will know how to speak slowly,
now that they fall over an ultimate hearing.

    Hearts with wings, nubile elbows,
that oppression that moves sweetly
a music birthed of the back.
The ignorance is the rubbing of two newborn chests.

    Oh seas that don’t exist under roots,
trees sustained over mouths that throb,
eyes that advance on the sky when low,
when over foreheads ideas are fingers.

    Blood in the cliffs, blood through the shocks,
branches that from their pulses grow toward voices,
body that hangs in the wind now without limitations,
wounded by tongues that suck its ants.



   

Vicente Aleixandre

                                       Landscape of the Vomiting Crowd
                 
                                          (Twilight in Coney Island)






The fat woman came out in front
tearing up roots and wetting
           drumskins .
The fat woman,
who turns agonized squid inside out.
The fat woman enemy of the moon,
who would run through the streets and uninhabited rooms
and would leave small dove skulls in corners
and raise furies of banquets of centuries
           past
and called to the bread devil
over hills of a vanished sky
and filtered an anguish of light
through the most subterranean circulations.

These are the graveyards.  I know it. These are the graveyards
and the pain of kitchens buried under sand.
These are the dead, the pheasants and apples of another hour
 pushing against our throats.


The sounds of the vomiting jungle have arrived
with vacant women and hot waxen children
with fermented trees and untiring waiters
who serve salt plates
under saliva harps.

Without remedy my child.  Vomit!  There is no remedy.
It is not the vomit of the Hussars
on the prostitutes’ breasts
nor the vomit of the cat who swallowed a frog by mistake.
It’s the others! who scratch with earthen hands
the flint doors where fungi and pastries rot.

The fat woman came out in front
with people in boats and taverns and
            gardens.
The vomit delicately agitated her drums
between sanguine girls who ask protection
          from the moon.
Oh my! Oh my! Oh my!
This glance was mine, but is mine no longer.
This glance that trembles naked from alcohol
and sends off incredible boats through anemones
          off the quay.
I defend myself with this glance
that flows from waves where dawn dare not arrive.

I, poet without arms, lost
amid the crowd that vomits,
without effusive horse to cut
the thick moss of my temples.

But the fat woman kept coming
and the people searched for pharmacies
where the bitter tropic settled.

Only when they raised the flag and the first curs
             arrived
did the entire city throng together
at the railings of the pier.



Federico Garcia Lorca