Ode




Who comes in the afternoon strumming his lute over
   the clouds, as if in his home!
Who strums, returning leaves to their trees!
I’ve filled my heart with the shadows of my words;
with the dreams of voices.
And they sound in me, without solace, uncovetous:  you, no one,
   tomorrow, space, solitude, tenderness, air, emptiness, wave,
and never.  I entertain myself with them, the anguish
   of the sky and the hardened solitude
of blood.
I wash my mouth with their absences and I call myself by day
    and night,
and I place them over my head, discovered, to assign
   them to forgetting, before and beneath the zenith
of the plains.
Their gods and bodies I’ve settled between my lips
   forever, praising them;
before me they withstand the air, oh, and the impenetrable
   height of death;
no one sees them as they don’t see the breath that makes them mute
   and governs them strictly.
(The angels walk through scattered space; some carry
   stalks of wheat, others choose red poppies,
and the rest bring seeds for birds amongst
    naked trees.

No one sees them; the light parches my throat they
   scatter their ancient clothing.
I watch them carrying their heads, unhurt by air, and
disappearing rapidly, bathed in clarity, before
   the fury of the night.

By now I’m accustomed to see them, inside me, as
   in those days whose smoke has dissipated
and whose kingdoms stretched out beneath ash
await white lilies without despair.)

I wish I could draw the happiness from myself; to open my eyes,
   immensely, that hurt me,
and to watch, to watch the horizon from behind the void
   of nostalgia, where my shadow,
like a tree, changes leaves in winter.

Love -- time lost!



Ricardo E. Molinari

                Ode to a Profound Sadness




I wish to sing a profound sadness that I won’t forget,
a tough language.  How often.

In my country Autumn is born of a dry flower,
of a few birds; at times I believe of my abandoned nape

or the penetrating steam of certain rivers of the plain
tired of the sun, of the people who at their banks
enjoy a life without majesty.

When you arrive to live amongst sacks of carbon
and you sense that your skin takes hold
of disgust,
of repugnant solitude; that being is an island without carnations,
you desire Autumn, the wind that catches leaves
the same as souls; the wind
that bends without heaviness the drunken herbs,
to envelop them in the solace of death.

No; I wish never to return to this earth;
All my flesh pains me, and where there had been a kiss
the air makes me fester.
In the florid Summer I’ve seen a bluish horse and
a transparent bull
drinking in the breast of rivers, innocent, its blood;
trees of veins, filled,  lost in the tepid labyrinths of the body,
in the oppressed, anxious flesh.  In Summer . . .
My days descended by the shadow of my face
and laid over my gut, my skin pure, murmuring,
enveloped in the sweetest clarity.
Like a madman, deafened, untiring,
the reed shattered the rose, the agitated bedazzling breast,
Without veils, a day without thought rests
indifferently in the void,
without man, with a twilight that comes with a sword.

A filthy brilliance burns me, flowers of the sky,
the great, majestic plains.
I wish to sing this profound sadness unearthed,
but, oh, I feel the sea arriving at my mouth.


Ricardo E. Molinari

                              Sea in the Earth




   No, don’t clamor for that hasty joy
that is latent when the dark music doesn’t vary,
when the dark stream passes indecipherable
like a river that scorns its landscape.

   Happiness doesn’t consist in the wringing of hands
while the world vacillates on its axis,
while light turned to paper
senses that a wind ruffles it smiling.

   Maybe the clamorous sea that in a shoe
will attempt to accommodate itself
   one night,
the infinite sea that wanted to be a dew,
that claimed to rest on a sleeping flower,
that wanted to awaken like a fresh tear.

   The resonant sea turned into a spear
lays in the dryness like a drowning fish,
clamors for that water that could be a kiss,
that could be a chest that rends and drowns.

   But the dry moon doesn’t respond to the reflection
   of pallid scales.
Death is a contraction of a glassy pupil,
it’s the impossibility of agitating arms,
of raising to the sky a cry that will wound.

   Death is the silence in dust, in memory,
it’s grimly stirring a language not of man,
it’s sensing that salt curdles coldly in veins
like an intensely white tree in a fish.

   And so joy, the dark joy of dying,
of understanding that the world is a grain that will dissolve,
that was born for a divine water,
for that immense sea that lays over dust.

  Joy will consist in undoing the minuscule,
in transforming into a sharp thorn,
rest of an ocean that like the light departed,
grain of sand that was a gigantic chest
that exited the throat lying here like a sob.


Vicente Aleixandre

                Childhood and Death




To search out my childhood -- My God!
I ate rotten oranges, old papers, empty pigeon lofts
and I encountered my little body eaten by rats
in the depth of the well with the manes of the mad.
My sailor’s suit
wasn’t soaked in the oil of whales
but had the vulnerable eternity of photographs.
Drowned, yes, well-drowned, sleep, my son, sleep.
Child conquered in school and in the waltz of the wounded rose,
amazed by the dark dawn of hairs over muscles,
amazed by its very man who chewed tobacco
     in his sinister flank.
I hear a dry river filled with jars of preserves
where the sewers sing and the shirts stained with blood
     are thrown.
A river of rotten cats that feigns corollas and anemones
to trick the moon and that leans itself sweetly in them.
Here alone with my drowned self.
Here alone with the breeze of cold mosses and lids
     of tin.
Here, alone, I see that they have already closed the door to me.
They have closed the door to me and there are a group of the dead
who play at target practice and another group of the dead
who search for the rinds of melons in the kitchen
and a recluse, blue, inexplicably dead
who searches for me in the stairs, who puts his hands in
      the well
while the stars fill the locks on the cathedrals with
      ash
and the people stay of a sudden with all the little
      suits.
To search out my childhood -- My God!
I ate squeezed lemons, stables, withered magazines
but my childhood was a rat that fled through
      the dark garden
and wore a gait of gold between its little teeth.


Federico Garcia Lorca

            Considering in the Cold, Impartially





Considering in the cold, impartially,
that man is sad, coughs and, nevertheless,
takes pleasure in his reddened chest;
that the only thing he does is to consist
of days;
that he is a gloomy mammal that combs itself . . .

Considering
that man proceeds smoothly from his job
and affecting his boss, resounds subordinate;
that the diagram of time
is a constant diorama in his medals
and, half-opened, his eyes will study,
from distant times,
his hungering formula of dough . . .

Understanding without effort
that man remains, at times, thinking,
as if wanting to cry,
and, subject to lie down like an object,
makes of himself a good carpenter, sweats, kills,
and later sings, has lunch, buttons himself up . . .

Examining, at last,
his stumbled upon pieces, his lavatory,
his desperation, in terminating his atrocious day, rubbing it out . . .

Considering also
that man is in truth an animal
and, nevertheless, in turning round, gives to me the sadness of his head . . .

Understanding
that he knows that I love him,
that I hate him with feeling and that he is, to me, in sum, indifferent . . .

Considering his general documents
and looking through glasses at that certificate
that proves that he was born very diminutive . . .

I make a sign to him,
he comes,
and I embrace him, passionately.
What more can it be!  Passionately . . .  Passionately . . .


Cesar Vallejo

                           Come, Come You





There where the sea doesn’t beat
where sadness shakes its glassy mane.
where breath softly exhaled
isn’t a metal butterfly but an air.

    An air smooth and soft
where words are murmured as in an ear.
Where weak feathers resound
that in the pink ear are the love that insists.

      Who wants me?  Who says that love
       is a twisted axe,
an exhaustion that divides the body at the waist,
a painful arc where light passes
subtly, never touching anyone?

     The trees in the wood sing as if they were birds.
A huge arm encases the jungle like a creature.
A golden bird by a never ending light
searches lips from which it can flee its jail.

     But the sea doesn’t beat like a heart,
nor a glass or tresses of a distant rock
but does more than assuming the brightness of the sun without return.
Nor are the innumerable fish that populate other skies
more than the slow waters of a remote pupil.

    Then this forest, this speck of blood,
this bird that escapes from a chest,
this breath that exits half-opened lips,
this pair of butterflies that some day may love each other . . .

     This ear that first hears my words,
this flesh that I love with my airborne kisses,
this leather that I narrow as if it were a name,
this rain that falls over my large body,
this freshness of a sky in which some teeth smile,
in which some arms widen, in which a sun threatens,
in which a total music sings invading everything,
in which the carton, the cords, the false fabric,
the painful sackcloth, the world rejected,
takes its leave like a sea that roars without destiny.

   

Vicente Aleixandre

                                  The Root of the Voice




Every day brings me a suit of surprises
And a new fire to my internal fire
My soul has its trade of sorrows
Like a water of remembrances
Or of trees that stir to resemble the sea
I sense something that rises from my dark regions
Which aspires to return me to the sky
Perhaps to give my yearning to the star which wants to support me
There is an unearthed voice that persists in my dreams
Which comes moving over me from my first days
And has crossed the heavy chain of my ancestors
There is a light of flesh that persists in my nights
That ties together certain souls with its rays
There is a devouring hope
A presage of the height touched by human hands
A presage ascending like a thirsty flower
More powerful than the song in the distance heard by the prisoner
There is something that wants to bring to birth my unborn ways
The pieces ignored by my silent being
So much has remained in insatiable labyrinths
Or the mortal mirrors have been taken away without repair
 in the danger of shadows
There is a notion of tears and warm words
That have also come crossing rivers
And epochs like unearthed cities
There is a toil of roots without sleep
And at the same time a formation of distance
For which we will bleed in certain hours
There is a throbbing of things that will mature darkness
And search out the precise word for living amongst ourselves
They search out their distinct odor as every flower must
Our future will be all of this
And the joy in bells disintegrating in their great sounds

Oh transparency of solitude!
Oh liberty of suspended augur!
Oh filter of the intimate conscience that weeps its destiny!
Have you heard enough by now your very voice
Agonized suspended by certain cells

Without the will to shock . . .
Listen now to the voice of the world
Watch the life that vacillates like a tree calling to the sun
When a man is touching his roots
The earth sings with its astral brothers


Vicente Huidobro