XI

Urganda the unknown? Not at all:
In a separate claim, Palma Arena,
Packages stuffed with brass and straw
And the larceny that shines in the night;
Rag-and-bone men the color of lead
And a pansy with pupils of blue.
The marauders of light
Wed not the figurines,
With the display window papered over.
The country of foam’s terracotta
Sees not the gold braids of sawdust,
The saturning nocturne of werewolves,
The rabble of scoundrels,
The scramble of the blue of the sky.
Joan Miró lived by this sea:
That is why we watch our words,
So as not to make peace with paper money,
With the veterinary of chemists and fodder.
Death in a Tyrolese hat
In the hills the color of hay,
Death with his vagabond eyes,
Will discover the asps of the day,
The Cleopatra in the suburb of tango
Touched with the picture hat with the plumage of toucan.
Our Homer will be Santos Discépolo
(Or perhaps he will be our Juvenal?).
The landscape has a date of expiry:
A suspension, between two wars,
A vacated instant of basil,
As well as discolored thyme,
Full sunlight with an odor of cyanide.
Flatland distant, instance annoying.
More tiresome than fatal: landscapes
For a panoply of scrapyards.
The deadly cavalade of memories,
The pink trophy table of non-being.
Each word, bereft of meaning,
Is only the clamor of secondaries,
The hoarse caw of scrap-dealers,
An exchange of falsifications:
The rube and the ha, the gullible’s fair,
Of card-sharps and number-runners, nothing more.
Death of Blas de Otero in the summer sun:
The dignity of the word on foot.
Yes, the rest is excess. The bowspirit pushes on,
Death ahead, for poetry:
Manifestly leads to the prow the eyes of living.
Alma Venus: love, revolution.