Dead Season

i

The great avenue,  the great avenue

full of well-fed people was shining

on the right the buses, on the left, the pedestrians 

the gutters in their turn waiting for spit

and the pee of moribund dogs

the moribund pedestrians buying death

ice-creams pumpkin seeds condoms

right there under the sign

“Shoe Shop”

I stopped suddenly to look

or rather without looking at anything in particular

maybe looking inside myself

and not finding anything

nothing at all

not lights nor shop windows nor sales

not even gutters

I thought about the great mistake

the great mistake is that I thought

the great avenue the great avenue

the bus the dogs

and the moribund.

 

ii.

 

Our age is maimed * it began proud as a peacock

with flags and drums

it breathed to death * it scattered jasmine and honey

it caressed delighted intoxicated

crowds of former slaves * now prisoners

it deceived.

 

 

iii

 

The other person I was, I became again

the moment when I met you

when I believed that I met you

while in reality I was living the dream

of a Cyclops

in love.

 

 

iv

 

You didn’t believe me * and I find that quite natural

because I know that my voice * disappears

on large horizons

in dark rooms  *  and in mirrors

and that saxophone

you strangled

looking over my shoulder * my forgotten life

like some garment  * beside the red boat

of July.

 

 

v

 

The flags the flags who’s holding the flags

who’s holding the flags

the banners the cherubim

the many-colored placards

with the passwords and the keywords

the hot air words?

They move on deep into the crowds

into the crowds who are suffering too

they retreat rejoice shout

explode.

And from the thousands of conflagrations

conflagrations

nuclei

cloudbursts

history is remade

and out comes our familiar fellow

the familiar fellow

Mr Papadopoulos

the one we all know

and nobody expected.

 

So much wisdom so much wisdom we had

that we didn’t see

we didn’t see

--maybe we still don’t see--

our most precious creation

what cost us so dearly

it cost us so dearly

dearly and conclusively.

 

 

 

vi.

 

To learn to wait

and to wait

always learning

and always waiting

to hope

and always hoping

to wait

learning

bitterness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

vii

 

 

But when in the night the darkness recoils

wounded by the flash of distant lighting

in my lost life, lost in crowds and flashes

came a distant light with the power of the end

to signal the beginning of my life that died and lived again

always ready for the great deaths that lead us steadfastly

to the bed where all things end and all begin.

 

 

*    *    *

 

 

And so I suddenly the amazing vision again

the beautiful procession which was nothing other than tongues of fire

a fire that burned and was rekindled from itself

and went on,  proud and meaningful

always against the wind of the stars

that whirled in the primal chaos

and sank into the crucible of the great night

that was my own soul.

 

 

*       *     *

 

How could I remain indifferent to this flaming crash

made up of my elements, elements of dream and anticipation

I was the crucible and the astral wind

I was the crash a little before the crash

and the fire and the march and the absence and the void

so that in the end I was nothing

and yet a glorious nothing

a nothing much more glorious than a thousand deaths united

almighty and splendid

while they stamp with their bloody seals

the blue vulva of life ever ready

to accept the spear of the sun which is my other self.

 

 

*     *     *

 

I saw nothing, I learned nothing, I forgot nothing

from all the nothing I now make my new face

that, too, will be a new nothing but worthy

like the bread they throw to the dogs of the highways

a moment before they smash into the wheels

and they’ll stay on their backs, stretched flat 

after they writhe for a while but that is meaningless

since the bread became blood I became blood

and the wheels and the earth  dry me, and the wind

of the huge trucks that drive steadily on paying no attention

loaded with deception and bodies, the indifferent passers-by

of our dead age.

 

Finally I saw you

it was always you first and last.

You were death precisely in order to erase everything

and so the alpha and beta could be written again

but with a new meaning, unheard of, unknown and threatening

which will finally call into question all that we have seen and not seen

whatever we have learned and above all whatever we have forgotten forever

so much so deeply and so bitterly that our memory has become the only

the memory of our mountains covered in thyme and lentisk

nests of snakes with ashy spots on green scales

that look so much like unwritten words full of dark significance

ready to spell out the meaning of love yet incomprehensible

colorless scentless invisible and moving.

 

 

*    *    *

 

You came and yet you were the same

as you would be if you were not you

exactly as you were then when I met you

and when I didn’t meet you

and I will never meet you

because I know you because I knew you and forgot you forever

so you would stay in my memory forever

shining absence and pain.

And all that became a great wound

big as a red plain

with earth of hard blood-red clay

with scant vegetation tormented by the great west wind

because the wind of the great west

that steadily murders the suns and the innocents

those who, like me, remained with their eyes wide open

bewitched by the azure in the red and in the orange

waiting in vain for the colors to speak

or to sing and be silent forever

creating the Symphony of Silence

with melodies made of silence

rhythms and harmonies from silence and tearful five-stringed instruments.

 

 

*    *   *

 

And then on the plain of my bloody sound

scorched on a thousand bulls

came the plough which has the shape of your absence

and passes and re-passes,  tears me apart and casts me down

to the last extreme of feeling and not feeling

so that everything changes and the vegetation becomes one with the earth

so as to receive the seed of the first tree

the tree that will bear the first fruit

and nourish the first person

and the first knowledge.

They call you glory.

 

And perhaps you will never know what you  always knew

precisely because you knew it before its beginning

and you will know it after its end

and so on forever and forever.

 

 

Buenos Aires, 1973.