I hear you undress in
the backlight
- Víctor Rodríguez Núñez
(Cuba)
one day I leave without opening the
door
no warning from the crow
and
the snowy horse
that pulls the manure-filled wagon
erases me with its breath
like
soot it vanishes
in a horizon vertical
planted among the lilies
its scent pulses in my chest
renounces itself
reddens the maples
outside speechless
I hear you undress back to the
light
I’m not what I will be or what I
was
experience ferment
hard eclipse
but you point me out
in the unsatisfied crowd
push me toward the thalamus
in between walls of a strange balance
show your breasts
deaf to reason
your hips tunneling
until the soil falls to my mouth
the waking rave
to the deathlute
the sleeping have died and take
pleasure
whether or not they wait for resurrection
at this point nobody
ought to
dodge nothingness
like in the case of the secret
lover
it’s enough to not invoke her
sourish name
you have to want it
with all the castlings of your
anima
with all the bees of your body
and if one betrays you
if one
turns its back on you
a term an instant
you won’t get there
death is only frightened by desire
the corroded city gets a move on
even if the roosters don’t crow
the gravediggers in blue overalls
surface from the emptiness
lime and idleness rule
as do
stolen carnations
the age undresses
no shadow or shame
some mossy bones on top of jute
sacks
in some way
in search of a tomb
the certainty of finding it
enlivens
once and for all deserted past
future
and present the mist
where you
can’t make out
the garbage I just took to the curb
home returning through the closed
door
old metaphor of the light
is a bent nail that can’t
hold these shafts against the sky
the shadow disjoins
no structure
with its calcinated pine breath
death is not the inverse of life
translated by
Katherine M. Hedeen