THRUSH
B
Sensual Elpinor
I saw him yesterday waiting by the door
under my window; it was
about seven o’clock; a woman was with him.
He looked like Elpinor, just before he fell
and smashed himself, and yet he wasn’t drunk.
He spoke very fast, and she gazed
absentmindedly toward the gramophones;
at times she’d interrupt him to say something
and then she’d look impatiently
toward where they fried fish; like a cat.
He whispered with a smoked cigarette between his lips.
—Listen to this also. In the moonlight
sometimes the statues bend like reeds
among the ripe fruits—the statues;
and the flame becomes a fresh oleander
the flame that burns man, I mean.
—It’s the light… shadows of the night…
—Perhaps the night that opened up, light-blue pomegranate
dark breast, and filled you with stars
slicing time. And yet the statues
bend sometimes, dividing desire in two, like a peach; and the flame
becomes a kiss on the limbs and a sob
and then a fresh leaf that the wind blows
they bend; become light with a human weight.
You don’t forget that.
—The statues are in the museum.
—No they chase you, why don’t you see it?
I mean to say with their broken limbs
with their ancient shape that you don’t know
yet you recognize. Like when
in the last years of your youth, you loved
a woman who remained beautiful, and you’d always fear
as you held her naked at high noon
the memory awakened in your embrace
you feared that the kiss would betray you
in other beds of the past
which nevertheless could haunt you
idols in the mirror, alive bodies of sometime ago
their sensuality. Like when
you return from foreign lands and by chance you open
an old trunk locked for years
and you find rags of cloths you used to wear
in pleasant times, in festive days with lights
colorful, mirrored, that always dim
and only the perfume of absence remains
of a young form. True, these fragments
are not the statues; you are the relic;
they chase you with a strange virginity
at home, in the office, in receptions of tycoons,
in the indescribable terror of sleep
they talk of things you’d prefer never existed
or that they’d take place years after you died
and this is difficult because…
—The statues are in the museum.
Good night. —…because the statues are not fragments anymore
we are. The statues bend slightly…goodnight.
At this point they separated He took
the uphill path leading to the Ursa Major
and she walked toward the fully lit seashore
where waves are drowned by the radio’s blaring.
Libros Libertad 