(these are all translated from spanish by w.s. merwin)
#11 from third vertical poetry
The black rivers
don't have any mouths.
They simply descend or diminish
into certain places that are not black.
Nor is it possible to navigate their water,
their almost water, their too-much water,
which looks the more solid for flowing.
Nor can we tell whether its blackness
is a language or a silence,
a real color
or a dark screen where
the world consumes its fictions.
Maybe the black rivers do not rise
anywhere either.
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#25 from second vertical poetry
On a night that should have been rain
or on the wharf of a harbor that perhaps did not exist,
or on a clear afternoon, sitting at a table with no one,
a part of me fell off.
It didn't leave a hole.
More than that, it looked as though something had arrived
and not as though something had gone.
But now
on the nights without rain,
in the cities without wharves,
at the tables without afternoons,
suddenly I feel much more alone
and I can't even get up the courage to touch myself,
though everything seems to be in its place,
maybe even a little more so than before.
And I suspect that it might have been better
to stay in that part of me that was lost
instead of in this almost all
that has not fallen yet.
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#7 from fourth vertical poetry
If we knew the point
where something is going to break,
where the thread of kisses will be cut,
where a look will no longer meet another,
where the heart will leap toward another place,
we could put another point on that point
or at least go with it to its breaking.
If we knew the point
where something is going to melt into something,
where the desert will meet the rain,
where the embrace will touch life itself,
where my death will come closer to yours,
we could unwind that point like a streamer,
or at least sing it till we died.
If we knew the point
where something will always be something,
where the bone will not forget the flesh,
where the fountain is moved to another fountain,
where the past will never be past,
we could leave that point and erase all the others,
or at least keep it in a safer place.
(to Laura)
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