PENELOPE SAYS
And your absence teaches me
what art could not
~ Daniel Weissbort
I didn’t weave, I didn’t knit
I started writing and erasing
under the weight of logos
since the internal pain obstructed
the writing of the perfect expression.
And since absence is the point of my life
— absence from life —
tears and the natural anguish of the body
that is deprived appear on paper.
I erase, I rip, I strangle
the loud screams
where are you, come, I wait for you
this spring isn’t like others
and I start again at dawn
with new birds and white bed-sheets
drying in the sunshine.
You will never be here
to water the flowers with the hose
that the old ceilings would drip
heavy from the rain
and my persona would be
dissolved in yours, quietly
autumnally…
your splendid heart
— splendid since I chose it —
will always be somewhere else
and using words I’ll sever
the threads that tie me
with a particular man
for who I long
until Odysseus becomes symbol
of Nostalgia
and sails the seas
in everybody’s mind.
I forget you passionately
every day
that you’ll cleanse yourself of the sins
of sweetness and smell
and totally clean you’ll enter
the realm of immortality.
This job is hard and joyless.
My only reward to finally understand
what’s human presence
what’s absence
or how the ego functions
in such desolation, in such long time
that nothing stops the tomorrow
the body always renews itself
gets up and goes to bed
as if someone chops it
sometimes sick, sometimes in love
hoping that
what loses in touch
it gains in substance.
Libros Libertad 