Notes Toward a Poetics
(Version II, Against Myself)
I.
I had fallen from grace
possessed as I was
by a gallery of ghosts
to whom I dedicated
the best years of my life
Shipwrecks storms Turners
old etchings which the bombing
has destroyed
Wars don’t discriminate
Madame X
Today Persia
tomorrow the River Ouse
—Time passes, time will continue passing—
It happens just as when I went to Paris
everything seemed so disjointed
—From one of my molars I extracted
the thread of Ariadne—
My sister Valentina lives here
We go to the museums
we remember our parents
our childhood
we analyze the differences and,
almost always, conclude
our country is completely corrupt
Two foreigners in the Metro
In this city, culture is free
Someone told me that when
she saw Tarkovsky’s Mirror for free
she cried and cried
The first time I cried
It was before El entierro del conde de Orgaz
in Toledo
Then it happened again while looking at a small painting
by Toulouse-Lautrec (The Abandonment or Two Friends
as I remember)
These Turners are disquieting
It’s not difficult to recognize oneself
in their oranges.
My sister Valentina and I
recognize ourselves
shards of heart of liver of pancreas
and of kidney
in homage to our brother
recently transplanted
How beautiful London is
though our memories are more so
—In what era would you most like to live?
Predictably in the 19th century
grand magenta dame
in England
We eat fried fish for lunch
by day
The wind frayed the fringe
of the palm trees
Threw dust in our eyes
on the island where we’d arrived
like two drowned women
—What more do you want?
Now for example I miss the warmth of your body
and your company
I would then be able to write a delicate poem
that no longer spoke of fear but instead of this
human relationship
afternoons of leisurely reading
and the lingering in the garden that happens sometimes
when you sleep at my house
We do nothing but from this nothing come
lightness and consistency
Life has unfolded in an act of extreme purification
and even the poem demands
the naturalism which overcomes the wound
because upon dropping the veil of grand gestures
perhaps the void of what is truly important might emerge
At the moment I open my eyes
and allow my skin to be touched
and if I write
it will be because I had the courage
to call things by their names
My women poet friends
have written about those
quotidian hells
It is not always true that man
has courage
We are all such small things
In the end
My friends relate
in poetic language:
* * *
I like this island
Margarita
If I lived here I wouldn’t write
I would tend a nursery which
I’d probably call House and Garden
White letters over a dark green background
Anglo-Saxon and enveloping
orchidarium garden of verdure
and a pergola in which to drink tea.
—Why don’t we communicate?
In this city the people cry in parking lots
I told you: give me the steering wheel
I gave you soup at my house
woman—essential
woman—ideal
woman—ghostly
—women don’t want to poeticize. Understand: in the lyric sense
they poeticized us enough.
Poetic discourse
poetics
No poetry no narrative no essay
movie dialogues
—They are the islands of which I was speaking
and everything I wanted to say about the living
and about the dead
How sweetly your beauty crashes down!
II.
My sister Valentina and I return to the museum
In the restaurant with views of the park
we drank tea in homage to the fallen
Criticism had taught us
—Carlos Basualdo
that the I was suspended
—To destroy the I in literature
We performed a ceremony in front of the steel statue
we made a bonfire
The orange tongues
—Turner’s England—
licked papers words and
the frayed palm trees
of William Faulkner
all these things lost forever
—Don’t find anything to speak of
Fragments of the spirit
clots of the 20th century
There are poets like this
they have the gift for words
God speaks through them
I don’t know
what the case is with me
In any event
silence is preferable
to the beautiful buildings of words
That come crashing down.
Kazimir in the Prow of a Boat
(Variations on a painting by Malevich)
1.
I was sailing down the Yenisei
Toward the mouth of the river
In the maw of the landscape
To be devoured.
I was traveling onboard
Across the landscape
Without counting the days
Since my destruction.
I was traveling toward my capitulation
To houses without
Clear views
Without a thought for the humble
Investiture of the monk.
I was distracted, not looking,
When I saw the riders
In a small oil painting,
And I lost my mind.
2.
I was sailing down the Yenisei
Toward the mouth of the river
In the maw of the landscape
To be devoured.
I was traveling onboard
Across History
Without counting the days
Since my destruction.
I was traveling toward my capitulation
To houses without
Clear views
Without a thought for the humble
Architecture of the laity.
I was distracted, not looking,
When I saw the riders
Approaching the riverbank,
And I lost my mind
3.
I was sailing down the Yenisei
Toward the mouth of the river
In the maw of the landscape
To be devoured.
I was traveling onboard
Across my History
Without counting the days
Since my destruction.
I was traveling toward my capitulation
To houses without
Clear views
Without a thought for the white
Investiture of the saint.
I was distracted, not looking,
When I saw the horses
Approach the riverbank,
And I lost my mind.