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Ten poems written in a month
is not much even if this one
becomes the eleventh.
Neither will the subjects differ,
rather there is only one subject
whose subject is the subject, like now.
This is to say how much
stays away from the page
and knocks and cannot enter,
nor should it. Writing
is not a mirror, instead
it is the grainy glass of showers,
where the body crumbles
and only its shadow shines through
indistinguishable but real.
And the one who washes cannot be recognized
except by his gestures.
Therefore how important it is
to see beyond the watermark,
unless I am the counterfeiter
and the watermark alone is my work.
(1980)
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It is specially in weeping
that the soul manifests
its presence
and by a secret contraction
transforms sorrow into water.
The first budding of the spirit
is therefore in the tear,
a word transparent and slow.
Following this elementary alchemy
truly thought turns itself into substance
like a stone wall or an arm.
And there is no turbulence in the liquid,
except the mineral
torment of matter.
(1980)
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Each night bent in the light
garden of pages
I pluck the fruits of the day
and muster them. Aligned,
the straight rows run full of thought,
the trails of a shrewd grafting.
My life is bound
to this frugal gathering-up,
the quotidian, humble consumptions.
No logic is in the taking
of withered flowers and fruits. The only thing,
which might be enough, is in this spontaneous
secretion, this vegetable of an idea.
Slow stirrings of the earth
that trouble the conception. Or cook it
for the simple guest.
(1980)
______________________________
I have finally learned
to read the live
constellation of women
and men, the lines
that connect them into figures.
And now I notice the hints
that subdue the disorder of the sky.
In this time designed by thought
I distinguish the revolutions of the light
and the rotation of the signs.
So close the days
while I walk
in the silent garden of gazes.
(1980)
______________________________
The pen glides
towards the groin of the page,
and in silence collects the writing.
This sheet has the geometric confines
of an African state on which I place
straight borders in the dunes.
Now I draw
while I tell this,
that telling will take its shape.
It is like a cloud
appearing to have
the form of a cloud.
(1980)
______________________________
In the evening when the light is small
I hide within the bed and
gather the outlines of reasoning
that run in silence upon my limbs.
It is here that I must weave
the tapestry of thinking
and in arranging the threads of myself
design within me my figure.
This is not a work
but a working-out.
First from paper, then from the body.
To conceive of the form of thought,
shape it subsequently by a measure.
I think of a tailor,
who is himself his own cloth.
(1980)
______________________________
I have often imagined that gazes
survive the act of seeing
like they were poles,
measuring lengths, lances
in a battle.
Then I think that inside a room
just abandoned
similar features must remain,
sometimes suspended and crisscrossed
in the equilibrium of their design,
intact and overlaid like the straws
in a game of pick-up-sticks.
(1987)