Tr. Judah Rubin
Something remains
after the match’s visitation
an image
like
69, 280 images
something
akin to
the slow testimony of the carpel
anesthetized
by time / the fire’s
skeleton
something that burns
something that ignites
terror’s articulated
motors
faith’s articulated
motors
the peristaltic
movements
hidden beneath rote
gesture
it’s
possible that something
lives on among the tailings
of the past
Theme for heavy metals (Yaraví)
In the distance someone explodes
In the distance
My soul’s discontent
having borne witness
In the distance someone
Disappears
In the distance
Through a slow fog
Something could have been done
We could have done something
But today
In the plastic materials with which love concerns itself
Little bursts of broom
Inflame the skin
Of those who come
Of those to come
Something
Which is open and breathes
Like a 3/8 inch hole
In the planet’s heart
If we are something
We do something
Today
We write
That
We do something.
Editor’s Note: Poem by Luis Hernández Camarero, Peruvian poet.
Country
The extended time
Of the woman in this battle
Over a cheap downpour
Over a map photocopied with cement
the heart’s open street
its sad lamp that switches nostalgia on
My Peruvian Sadness (Huayno)
Happiness is a flower that braids the virgencita’s tenderness
My professor’s hair smelling of peach and melancholy
Sadness blossoms on my sheep when I think beyond
On my body there’s the open golden wound pulsing from its slash
I am as the sweet hour of the sea’s invention of a city in heat
Of the thousand helicopters’ tender embrace
Of murderers hired to extract the pardon of certain critters
For bedding down early on the night’s warm milk
With a woman like a cinnamon stick
The goldfinch alighted on my sadness
Its beak of constellations above the city that drifts off…
I have little to give the future
I love that life entangled among the trees,
etc
etc
a thoroughly Monday morning feeling
ships that scan the street’s mistakes
the hot cereals adhered to this closed shop
tenderly sifting through the pockets
goading the gilded portrait of the heroic defeat
the circumference fermented in hard decisions
rainbow that begs the alpacas of an inveterate skeleton
to speak of love, its cornucopia [PLEASE DON’T SPEAK TO IT]
the metal installed in the precious cavities of one who smiles
the language that registers just four letters of its name
the exercise of colors from its laboratory of dreams
in the black box of a nightmare imported by mediocre authority
accident that readies its refrain without farewell / and there is no remedy*
when I see its flesh in the street covered with news
to have an excuse for time on-time
to know how aesthetically to resolve an explosion at the center of the skull
and where to shake the eucalyptus of its pollen turned to dust
to grow with the beauty of unattainable lies
to really know what happened while happiness slept
one day I will open my heart like a lumberjack who splits open a watermelon
the thirst will rid me of my Bengal animals
in the destroyed park
of our
first
small
battles.