DEVIL WITH A CANDLESTICK
Later when the gunshots started I didn’t know who to
save first
many useless things needed my attention, the verger
narrated her ancient argument
with Hagia Kaikilia, “I therefore go to the doctor; he
was at his last hours I’m still alive” he said to us
all others had found refuge at the storage room where
the last scene was unfolding; the pawnbroker was
standing at the edge, I saw them running, I locked
the door; this has been repeated for centuries;
in other words, I just managed to understand what
I was saying, since I often died,
just to earn some coal for the winter cold.
Poor humanity, you haven’t even written a short
chapter
and the poor man of unknown name and residence
died; they took him to be used at the lab anatomy
lessons and sometimes a lonely woman cries next
to the empty bed not knowing how she touched
the enigma with that rotten kerchief.
I was sitting, I remember, at the café, autumn,
and was listening to the vague conversations
the sound of games of chance when he suddenly
came in sat at my table and coughed, to fool me
of course, “you have to hide for a while”
he says to me “lower your pants asshole”,
I say to him, “let me see your belly button” and
indeed he was that wretched asshole, the first man,
the traitor who wanted to learn,
until they expelled us.
However I can’t but cry each time my hand touches
the soft belly button of the prostitute; those
tiny hairs as if someone continues his tender
narration from far away.
If, one day, I manage to escape, I’ll open a small
store in a side street
to sell bitter things: tiny taxidermy animals, biographies
of poor people,
eyelids that never closed and of course, unthoughtful
spirit lamps;
on the entrance I’ll write, “pay the blind man on the
opposite side, he’s the only one who knows”. During
the evening I’ll sit by the door with my black hat and
a patisserie tray on hand for whoever can understand.
And perhaps that funny old woman may return with her
faint smile held with pins
“I’ve brought it to you” she will say, “she has her
own house” and perhaps she means uncertainty or
the dead woman or as the Lord may have ordered
since the preacher kept on crying out “brothers”
and untie Eudokia “silence” she says to me “what’s
this and put the wall back to where it belongs”.
Now I’m sad that you won’t be able to write to me,
my good friend,
the envelopes and writing paper are expensive indeed
for a dead person (who they unthoughtfully bury
in the dampness)
yet when I usually think of you
it’s as if I get dressed in all the black ashtrays and
your mother, let them call her crazy because she always
holds an umbrella,
since it always rains in the world now, as an old poet
would have said, the real stories are very rare.
God help us.
Libros Libertad 