4
Is it possible a poem
like a glowing ember
which does not extinguish
nor discourage itself
and persists
in history
beyond bared knees
sweating armpits
and turns over on itself
and on life
like a tick
on fresh meat?
it is possible
it is the only way
possible
7
I am taking the word out of a well
so many times I stopped counting
one two three one two three one two
I am taking it out little by little
(the whole is hard as a rock)
at times heavy as a sentence
and I must go by sections
puffing and grazing
a beast of burden
prehistoric beast
that lifts what it lifts
enigma obsolescence my dear love
a beating heart
that chews its own skin
poison or honey it’s all the same
by the end of the afternoon
one looks herself in the mirror
and sees what it sees
word slayed
but alive
12
Full of dark birds is the city
and no way to scare them off
they peck at our bodies
like a true hailstorm
Eyeballs teeth and noses fly
amid discordant
sobs and screams
what’s more
the dark birds strike
particular larders
supermarkets and henhouses
leaving emptiness and blood
behind
Me—brute among brutes—
gathering pieces
mending faces
night and day
sore hands
and rank skin
with a mere crust
of bread
a mere water drop
blind and poetic
always after the same
goal—
the word on the table
the word on the page
the word on the sky
the word on the white-hot
heart
14
brute brute
force gone
in a single blow
repeating in time
An ancestral
and monotonous cadence
wraps the air
while more than a few
cover their ears
as if a cicada
constantly tortured them
it’s because I’m deaf
it’s because I’m blind
it’s because I batter
into the black night
it’s because I’m alone
and my passion is here
but amiss
I insist—silly of me—
on opening the door
to only
an aftertaste of voice
a faint wisp of sound
no door
no padlock that may open
I opt to fall asleep
on the poem
Translated by Sebastián Figueroa and Elise Ghitman
Poems from Fuerza bruta (Valdivia, Ediciones El Kultrún, 2019)
