The King of Asini
Ασίνην τε…ILIAD
We looked all around the citadel for the whole morning
starting from the shaded side there where the sea,
green and without reflection, breast of the slaughtered peacock,
welcomed us like time without any chasm in it.
The veins of the rock descended from high up
twisted vines, naked, multi-branched turning alive
at the touch of water, as the eye following them
struggled to escape the tedious rocking of sea growing slowly-slowly weaker.
On the sunny side a long deserted beach
and the light rubbing diamonds on the great walls.
Not any living being, the wild doves gone
and the king of Asini, whom we’ve looked for the last two years
unknown, forgotten by all and also by Homer
only one word in Iliad and even that uncertain
thrown here like a burial golden mask.
You touched it, do you remember its sound?
Hollow in the light like the dry jar in the dug soil;
and the same sound in the sea made by our oars.
The king of Asini emptiness under the mask
everywhere with us, everywhere with us,
under one name:‘Aσίνην τε…Ασίνην τε…’ and his children statues
and his desires fluttering of birds and the wind
among interstices of his thoughts and his ships
moored in an invisible port
under the mask a void.
Behind the big eyes, the contoured lips, the curls
glyphs on the gold cover of our existence
a dark point traveling like a fishing the dawn serenity of pelagos and you see it:
a void everywhere with us.
And the bird that flew away the last winter
with a broken wing relic of life,
and the young woman who left to play
with the dog-teeth of summer
and the soul that reached the underworld shrieking
and the landscape like a large plane tree leaf swept by the sun’s torrent
with the ancient temples and contemporary sorrow.
And the lingering poet, looks at the stones and wonders
do they really exist between these erased lines, the edges, the hollows the contours
do they really exist
there where the rain’s passing meets with the wind and ravage
they do exist, the movement of life, the shape of tenderness
of those who faded out so strangely in our lives
of those who remained as shadows of waves and thoughts in the endlessness of pelagos
or perhaps no, nothing remains but the weight
the nostalgia of the weight of an alive existence
there where we remain unsubstantial bending
like branches of the terrible willow tree piled in the continued despair
while the yellow current slowly carries down rushes uprooted in the mud
image of a form turned into stone by the sentence of an everlasting bitterness.
The poet a void.
The sun carrying a shield rose fighting
and from depths of the cave a startled bat pierced the light like
an arrow pierces a shield:‘Ασίνην τε Ασίνην τε…’ As though it was him
the king of Asini
who we have so carefully searched for on this acropolis
sometimes touching with our fingers his touch on the stones.
Libros Libertad 