THE DEAD HOUSE
I often saw, through the window, these dresses
which walked alone under the trees
fluttering lightly like moonlit shadows, and behind
their white steam, behind their pale undulation
you could discern the dry fountain with the bronze
dolphin curved over in an ultimate gleam of escape,
that diaphanous, glassy escape that didn’t leave
any trace of guilt of memory since memory is also
useless in a continuous absence or presence. However
that musical vein was heard everywhere, and you didn’t
know whether you were happy, what is happiness?
You could only discern what you never paid attention,
things you didn’t see, yet things left without any weight.
We didn’t even know the messenger, nor the murderer,
or the frightened servant girls running away, and I was
one of the two girls sitting by the windows and saw
the two girls down at the stairway or the road, from
the position of the messenger or that of the younger
servant girl, I was the one who always stood by
the window (I often felt jealous of the servant girls
for their beautiful foul-mouth, their cleverly…
Libros Libertad 