THE GATE
(EXCERPT XIV)
The bird rests on the shoulder of the stony woman
the bird trembles, wobbles, pops up, flies away;
bird that flies
bird I don’t want to keep, I gaze at it; I can see
the stony woman entirely, I go around her, I don’t
touch her;
I choke the bird, put its feathers in my shoe
it softens my sole, time to climb up the hill, to grab
the cloud’s tail
the moon a pillow on my cheek during the night
plucking, under the blanket, the colonel’s crest
half given to sleep half to the plucking
familiar with both halves —
Death is a curse and so is birth, I yelled;
the leather belt that tightens around your pants,
tightly keeping the worms under the soil, in the damp
darkness;
I told the old woman, stop don’t clean the trough
drown the kittens, get the threads to sew the two
half squeezed lemons; I know this shoeless man who
climbs up the interior stairway at midnight, sweeps
the chimney with his thin long arm and with the tar
he makes crosses on the white tiles of the terrace;
on the other side is the beer parlor with the sailors
and the yellow little lamps
next to the rifle range with the painted fat women
you aimed right on the target (will you do it again?)
you didn’t aim right on the target (will you aim at it?)
tirelessly, tirelessly, tirelessly
amid all the tiredness, with the wood creaking
during the night, the steel, the rust, bad silence
all the way in, and further in, camouflaged by
the external explosions, the stammering.
Who builds during the night? Who demolishes?
What do they build?
Libros Libertad 