A HUNDRED AND TWELVE

A Hundred and Twelve

trans. Anna Rosen Guerci

I

A hundred and twelve steps as escape,

talent of one who knows long aural winters/

Vocal stammering; rhizome unfurled in fugitive leaf;

how else could hatred speak/

Face or cross of an alphabet resolved by rending;

double entry, game in ellipsis/

Pray, not the Our Father or the Ave Maria,

in your accent name all that is;

on top of the leather hide the hard anatomy, its breast already unguarded: terror smears the shoulder/

We pray on the beach La Herradura elucidated fears;

piece by piece geography checks off hand-carved nightsticks/

mouth of the well snipershot organ;

twentieth century, embossed by hand, no hinges,

central beveled mirror, solid legs, the decoration somewhat severe,

the epoch’s black marble; tell yourself it’s an heirloom for experts/

Then laughter dispelled all tinsel, failure and anguish,

we named the letter N to contradict time and censure;

descend from the eye of light —radial tracery, may the saints devour your years/

The carousel turns drilled through by bullets, not even the fallen leaves

or sun’s rays speak in captive voices;

behind the immovable the puppet masters and a pair of blind old men:

suffocating air enthroned/

The seafoam turns/

Pijuayo peels, arazá fruit,

mute remains where the word certainty took root/

Bang on the door, descend, clench;

pulp ring prophetic knot, grinding where hatred hangs/

then the birds slept/

An intense geography of spikes awaits the mouth;

no jailer no hangman no debtor no one pressing down on the infant’s

petalic chest/

Raise up the night, Saturday or Friday, rigging that adjusts the strength of the blow/

Hosanna Hosanna Hosanna/

The notation served as a medium, cross-referenced with the report,

scores or an outline where the page springs forth calligraphic/

dark green bundle of branches where scarcely,

fugue crack secret orifices where the era grows short: eyes/

I’m telling you, alphabetical order will eventually disappear/

The chest’s lingering pentagonal autumns;

hinge between gesture and sound, ar-ti-cu-la-tion,

on the black mountain they share the same curtain black with blood,

it doesn’t matter whether it comes from the sea, river, mountain range, communal feast of scraps, cadaver/

Here, the people are free to come and go as they please;

the birth of forgetting bestowed on the surfeit of spectacle,

historical periodicity, the expert will say/

Dilapidated aristocratic language, aching to the core,

transoceanic babbling, sauntering among houses of storm and howling;

The drunkest letter in Spanish

— nuclear N metronomic ad libitum heatstroked — the pronouncement made:

“a ringing anvil crushes the tympanic cavity,

practiced chord of blackest horror

where our century is kept.”

II

A hundred and twelve steps smelling the entrance, talent of one who lives long summers under the tongue/

Nesting of petrels to avoid the resurrection; first cause to glance over the rubble/

Keepsakes nest (survive) in places: tactile realities, sore / verbalize the color, the fracture’s shine/

Superstrings —topoi— neurons’ vibrational

filament —no doors, no spotlight, no fixed

axis: just mental spaces all the way down/

Burn your belongings.  Descend to the salivary

lake of the masses.  Teeth and dirty cheeks/

Observe: steps labyrinthine streets favelas

neighborhoods where the pupil dematerializes/

hands sta-in-ed wi-th in-k/

Depredation of the auroral thicket: “tomorrow

there will be water for washing the bodies but no food, the fruit will come in another three days”

To the eyelid, the night is no more than a fence of pale days; curb loaf crops, the taste of water is cotton over your face/

Pulsar body, delicate hibiscus flower or mangrove palm: residual beauty of misery/

There was a profusion of voices. Replaceable.

Particles of fashionably dressed ghosts/

Such shouting such head spinning such

dictator lying in wait behind closed eyes;

the crowd sweats on the metro, the man’s hands sweat as he makes out the check: star-shaped wasp in radiator/

Depredation. Minutes before the storm.

Patron saint’s day, fires and rockets: witnesses,

anesthetized conduct. —Hound, over the hound

the salt/

Exact measure of what you have at hand, grams, in your pocket coins from the Ministry: service station bank security camera, high concentration of proteins for the heist

They knew about the sunless places of sun, of wise men who bury the bodies inside other bodies/

They knew about the roofless buildings, closed

to the eyes, they knew.  And that everything comes down to the ear/

They knew about the will to recreate Rome,

about fire word gust slaughterhouse. They knew/

White flowers and African roses, in the waters

of the lake there is no Baltic, no Pacific. There are snakes/

Open circle: inside filaments threading ghosts to say a name, Juan or Gustavo, teasel/

Body migrated to alterity; boreal, the mouth was aurora borealis, blackishgreen or reddishblack yellowlilac: potency of the gust inside of, on/

Becoming to liberate the, — viral infection,

surfeit of the present, “there’s no more coffee,

get rid of it, get rid of everything,” camouflage:

ear finely-tuned to catch unarticulated sounds,

wind breakwater lullabies screaming hordes

ultra fast heartbeats 2507 petaflop knife chopping onion milky way streaming by/

suspension, blood in suspension/

after everything that’s happened, how else could hatred speak?

Posted: November 20, 2012 at 4:08 am