TUESDAY
I went down to the St James Infirmary
•
BLUES
I got lost in the city.
The orchards are hidden by the Don Juan Tavera
Hospital.
Roads wrapping up advertisements.
Every man walks without knowing
whether he is at the start or the end
whether he goes to his mother, to his daughter or
to his lover
whether he will judge or be judged
whether he will escape or has already escaped
he doesn’t know.
In every corner a gramophone shop
in every shop a hundred gramophones
in every gramophone a hundred records
in every record
an alive person playing with a dead one.
Take the steel needle and separate them
if you can.
But which poet? Do you remember which poet
tried out the steel needle
in the seams of the human skull?
Do you remember his song that night?
I remember that he asked us for an aspirin
his eyes played loosened in black circles
he was pale and two deep wrinkles
around his forehead. Or was it you
perhaps? Or me? Or perhaps it was
the silent Antigone with her shoulders
bending over her breasts?
I kept her close to me for ten nights
every dawn she cried for her child.
I remember I looked for a pharmacy.
They were all closed. I don’t know who for.
I got lost in the city
no one will move the hospital
full of crippled children signaling
to me or to others who followed me.
Vapours of medicines in the air
become heavy, fall in love and mix
with vapours from cars taking off
to the country with pro-Raphalelite couples
totally blond yet a bit discolored.
In the spring of 1923 Livia Rimini
the film star died in her bath;
they found her dead immersed in perfume
and the water not yet cold.
However yesterday in the movies
she looked at me with her useless eyes.
Libros Libertad 