AS AN ECHO FROM THE FUTURE

TO SADNESS

To sadness,

let it be.

Stay busy with your duties.

Coexist.

It inhabits your space

and you inhabit its own.

Do not be disturbed by its presence,

let it be.

It will leave again

in the same way

it arrived,

without asking your permission.

TO THIS FLOWER

Will I ever see you again,

or will we never meet once more?

Was all that magic from before

so fleeting, broken at its core?

Was its alchemy, woman,

a gray echo of the past?

Will I find you, at last,

on an unsuspected day?

Or must I put you away

like a dream that could not last?

Is the time of love so brief,

so measured, soon undone?

Does it die, its light outshone,

like a wave upon the deep?

Is its price—to find relief—

to languish in longing’s pain?

Is its lesson this refrain,

your vanishing trace?

Is it some star’s cruel caprice

that deprives me of all hope again?

Is it that, from not seeing you,

I slowly grow accustomed?

Is the day I now glimpse

a prelude unto death?

Is it that, in lacking you,

your image fades away?

Why did spring grant this flower

such a short-lived display?

Why does your grace miscarry,

disguised as chimera’s sway?

TO MY MOTHER AND TO MY DAUGHTER

(On a verse from Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz)

Like a book I leaf through and dust off,

your letters are phrases where I lose myself,

or read from a you that is now your memory:

it is a corpse, a shadow, nothing, dust.

Where you are without being, where your presence

astonishes, felt moving through the air,

that you who never gave consent to leave:

it is a corpse, it is dust, nothing, shadow.

I know you live; I know that death is not

entire truth, that your gaze is still the same

as the one from who never was able to see you.

Her eyes are yours, astonished.

That tomb which claims to hold you:

it is a corpse, it is dust, it is shadow, it is nothing.

FAR AWAY AND LONG AGO

Far away and long ago

I believed in truth,

and though it ill befitted my youth

I sought knowledge out of season;

love was but a pastime then,

the sea my closest friend.

I was a poor actor —and still am,

if that is what you ask—;

with my childhood, now long dead,

I left behind its warmth.

I suppose some trace remains

of who I used to be,

but autumn is a poor witness

to spring.

I wrestle with the present

my fear of mirrors;

I head toward the land of the old,

the one you never return from;

a life that once began

long ago and far away now leaves.

ANTIDOTE TO RANCOR

Rancor is a plant

that needs care;

I sow it in rich soil,

and the very prospect frightens me.

I saw your scornful grimace,

and hated you profoundly;

I saw you feign, insolent,

that my presence meant nothing,

as though you hadn’t noticed,

hemmed in by so many people.

I am stubborn—it’s evident,

or so I begin to see:

to reproach you, woman,

is a cruel trick of my mind.

I rebuke my incongruous heart

for its foolish urge to suffer,

for insisting as though it owed you

gratitude, or still could

make room for you in my life.

Better to let you die

so I can smile upon seeing you;

how much more can I lose you

if I have already seen you leave?

I must educate my feelings

and this ill-born plant

that strains to stay alive,

cut it off at the root,

sending your beloved 

silhouette

straight to hell.

I SEARCH AND I DON’T

I search for you —I do not confess it,

not even to myself— but I search

for signs of you; I translate

your beloved trace and stumble,

delirious over the trail of a kiss;

I am a dream, I conquer your soul.

I am a hungry wolf, I exist

only by virtue of desire;

I scent your blood, I sniff the air,

I search and I don’t —I’m stubborn, I persist—.

I search for you; I have proof

that I have looked into your eyes;

your red lips call to me,

be it sun, clear skies, or rain.

I follow your trail, the new one,

wherever your footsteps lead.

I gather the scattered pieces,

illusion reborn;

I search, enter the fog,

draw your outlines in the air.

I search for you, constant,

along a path I invent;

at every shortcut I sense

your loving mouth will be there.

I search for another moment of you,

I clothe myself in hope;

scent, colors —I persist—;

I find you in a skein,

a cruel thread of love and complaint:

I search and I don’t —I’m stubborn, I persist—.

 THE RIDE

Let your dress and lace fall to the ground, 

and let desire flow like burning lava, 

a conjuring breath that confirms and denies 

this perpetual instant that was granted to us. 

Thus my skin must have dreamed of you, while it thaws 

at the voluptuous touch of your curves, 

like the muffled peal from the depths, 

like the fevered clapper of a longed-for wound. 

Fit yourself to my body, for my flesh is ready 

to be gladly devoured by yours; 

I offer it to your jaws, naked and erect. 

Hold fast to my hands under the starry night. 

I shall be your thirsty mount for the flight; 

together we shall retrace the path to heaven.

AS IN FAIRY TALES

My children,

I wish I could tell you

that good and love

will triumph

as in fairy tales,

but it is not certain,

nor does it depend

entirely on us.

What I would tell you

is not to forget

that we must live with that idea:

that good and love

deserve a place in our hearts.

Let them prevail there,

as in fairy tales,

and thus do 

our part,

our small part,

the part that depends on us,

because even so, it matters.

AS AN ECHO FROM THE FUTURE

As an echo of the future 

or of a distant past, 

I fear I’ve already visited 

the sun on its dark side; 

its impure aroma intoxicated me 

filling my lungs, 

it contaminated my visions 

with its foul and filthy stench. 

I come from a profound place, 

devoid of all illusions.

I was with the legions 

that destroyed Carthage; 

I vaguely recall

being hosted by kings

of a thousand nations,

by builders of empires.

I am a flower of the cemeteries 

where men are made brothers 

when the worm exults 

revealing their mysteries.

I have been in the insults 

that accompany the revolts, 

in the dissolved nations 

and in all the captivities; 

I have exercised authority, 

I have been acclaimed on the podium, 

I have been an ungrateful custodian 

disguised as a chimera. 

They call me by a thousand names, 

but my name is hatred.

THINGS I WILL NOT TELL MY SON

Just as you

will believe it in the future,

so too I did believe

that love could conquer all,

until they made me understand

I was mistaken

—it was a bitter draught,

though it did not kill me—.

I had to rebuild my smile,

reinvent my reasons,

and understand

that only you, both of you

would miss me,

and I had no choice

but to fill myself with courage,

forgive,

and forgive myself,

to keep on living.

OF THAT TORRID ROMANCE

I sometimes think it never happened,

so much time has passed;

perhaps I dreamed it,

or my mind invented it.

I only know we were brought together

—winter’s paradox—

by that near-eternal instant

of a torrid romance;

your farewell was an absurd trance

after the tenderest kiss.

I know well the fraternal disguise

that is but a crude illusion,

that wraps every endless longing

in unreason.

An idyll turned inferno

are your thorned petals.

You do not know, you cannot imagine

how much I could have loved you;

of you I will speak to death

if I find myself in its mists.

In the wandering hours

the days keep carving,

I find myself meeting you again,

with no room for grudge.

Thus you draw near,

stubborn love, demented love.

I know it convinces little

to say I remember you

when I neither win nor lose,

nor search for you among the crowd.

Verse that springs up with urgency

when it is no longer needed,

collecting its wage

from an impenitent sorrow.

Yesterday’s voice in my present,

a past that never passed.

From subtracting you, I remain,

unburying love:

can never truly heal

the wound that never closed.

DECLARATION OF PRINCIPLES

And yes,

I confess it in writing:

it arouses me far more

(much, much more)

to see your underwear hanging,

facing the sun,

mute witness of dampness,

perverse trigger

of unnameable fantasies,

hung out to dry with its familiar,

almost imperceptible little holes,

tiny, 

indiscreet,

caused by the wear of your days

and nights,

by time

and successive rigorous rubbings

in a gray washing machine

—Russian, and more than Russian,

Soviet,

not to say antediluvian—.

You wouldn’t believe me, love.

I know. I accept it. I understand.

You will surely think

I’m already delusional,

that I’m missing a screw, maybe two,

that I still haven’t seen

that beautiful lingerie 

with the finest lace,

that perfect display of erectogenic seduction

you bought on sale

at your favorite boutique

and keep so carefully

for special occasions,

for that lucky one

you allow to jump in

on some of your 

nights.

I am old school.

Perhaps I should say retrosexual

so we can understand each other,

now that the fever for taxonomy

has returned to that 

unclassifiable 

space of desire.

I predate the porn-megapixel industry,

I don’t manicure my nails,

and I couldn’t care less

what people are wearing 

this summer.

In this humble room

only violently naked flesh

is in fashion.

Undress yourself please.

I am hungry.

THE SAME WAY

I imagine

that in the same way

the Jews learned to live

with the sad, 

painful awareness

that the Temple

no longer existed,

I imagine

that also,

in the same way,

I learned to live

without you.

ROOTLESSNESS

If it were as simple

as saying

this is my place

or that one I left,

migration would be simpler.

You are going to start

—they tell you—

a new life,

and before you do

it seems as logical

as shedding skin.

Between the island I carry

and the country of the children I do not have

there is the sea,

home to so many 

wretched souls

without peace or burial

who never reached land.

I have what they did not.

America let me in,

and at last

I begin to be part of it.

I should feel fortunate,

which in itself

is a heavy burden.

I am

one more grain of diaspora

dissolved in nostalgia

for a country I could no longer return to.

I am

ceasing to be Cuban

on all four sides.

One of my sides

is already from here—

or at least

no longer so much from there.

Wiping my nephew’s ass

I heard his tender voice

saying “thank you,”

and then I learned

what they call

the second generation of immigrants.

I understand the suicides in the subway.

Yet back in Cuba no one could understand

how could one kill oneself

with a full belly?

I hear tourists returning happy;

I too would be happy

if I could be there whenever I wished, with money.

How can someone want to escape from paradise?

Yes, I know the answers,

but I don’t want to get depressed.

I have to go to work

and smile as expected.

Let’s admit it:

though I have no great ambitions,

at least I have

an instinct for self-preservation.

So far from Cuba,

so far from Havana,

so far from my home,

I wonder whether my home still exists

as I pay rent

for the room I live in.

Montréal is a good place under the sun,

but no one would miss me

if one day I were gone.

That is what they call rootlessness.

DIXIT

We remained in silence,

still naked,

or perhaps half dressed

—I cannot be sure—

but I do remember this:

the light in our bedroom.

And I remember then

that with a very low voice,

as if transformed into someone different

yet the same,

by the alchemy of love,

or perhaps becoming again

that girl

I had fallen so madly in love with,

voluntarily stripped

of every mask,

triumphing 

for a few brief instants

in her struggle to be someone better,

and as if speaking to herself

despite being myself there,

in that place of the one addressed,

in that mental state

of discovering 

the most obvious thing,

of being astonished

by something as supremely simple

as two plus two being four,

she said to me exactly these words:

“You do love me for real.”

TWO SOLITUDES

Two solitudes kiss each other,

without even offer company in return;

they measure out, stingily,

just the time needed to give themselves,

ending where they begin,

with no pretense of infinity,

a gratuitous nonsense

beyond the brief embrace,

the outline blurring

of a proscribed feeling.

Two solitudes, I repeat,

stripping sadness bare

for being an unfinished piece

or the mechanism of a cry,

unable to sate their appetite

with tantalic agony,

their ill-made love, the madness

of a promise drawn in sand,

two halves and a sorrow

with its autumnal symphony.

I no longer have where I once had

the breath to give you,

nor can you give yourself

with passion so emptied out.

Night gives way to day,

waves die and are reborn,

two solitudes as lonely

as only solitudes can be,

a myocardium which, if it existed,

would lie spinning in jukeboxes.

Serpents biting their own tails,

forming an infinite ring,

the sterile, accursed payment

for the affection you hoist aloft;

you hesitate, you protocolize,

you turn fear into virtue,

a decrepit youth

no longer found in the eyes,

a paradox where there is room for it:

two solitudes, you and I.

THE FOREST OF TÂRGOVIȘTE, 1462

In Wallachia there was a voivode

known as the Impaler,

who gave the Turks

the finest medicine of all.

He skewered them fashionably

so they might think better of it

and thus return to their own land

instead of ravaging 

another people’s country.

The Ottomans, what a shame

they ended up like kebabs!

It was not that they were invited

when they invaded Europe;

with their overwhelming troops

there was no place they did not trample.

But those who make terror a tool

will always be paid back,

and such was Vlad, the Wallachian,

who charged them in the back

a tax for so many affronts.

According to history,

when the sultan beheld

that forest, something struck him

at such a truculent sight.

Unable to count

his own men impaled,

he said: “Come on, quickly,

let us return to Turkey;

there is a lack of courtesy here,

or they are very poorly educated.”

And so, desolate,

they began their retreat;

at least their backsides intact,

defeated by fear.

They had arrived emboldened

but returned crestfallen,

their guts chilled

by a dark premonition,

dreaming of the moment

they might wake up —if asleep—.

Of those mounted trunks

twenty thousand remained,

and thus the vile Turk learned

that in those lost lands

they would always be received

with stubborn hospitality,

that there would be no stinginess

nor bargaining in war,

that on that hostile soil

better not to expect mercy.

THE ROAD

The road is interwoven

with stones and with a few sorrows;

I come from far away, very far away,

carrying a thirsty soul.

I know of pain and death

and other things I learned,

not always from what was pleasant,

but also of good things:

the warmth of a friend,

or that love that is given

between two human beings;

I know of bonds that remain.

Little or much I may have learned

—life was my teacher—.

It taught me little by little,

and I learned from its school

the best I could,

in hours that are now gone,

for it is the passage of time

that tightens the rope

which will cinch its knot

when your final hour arrives.

I am nearly twice the age

I was when I departed

from that country where the sun

shone on me for the first time.

I said goodbye when I left,

but I did not think it was

a one-way journey only;

for whoever returns knows well

that return is impossible

once you abandon your land:

there is something lost,

a broken connection that afflicts you,

something that fractures your blood

and becomes your sentence;

a distance that keeps growing

when you are the one outside,

deceiving a memory

that begins to leak,

like the roof of a house

destroyed by a tropical cyclone.

I left my house, my books,

and today only graves await me

of certain loved ones

I left in that land;

some good friends

who I do not know if still dream of me

as I always dream of them,

and a pile of old photographs

of places that once existed

and which dust has demolished.

My children are very far away,

as far away as that land;

my life is split

into two whole halves,

between staying and leaving,

with a star for a flag.

I left my house, my books,

but I brought that flag

to serve me as shelter

in this foreign land.

THE HUNGER OF THE HEART

It is a sad truth

that searching is the best way

to find nothing.

This is the lucidity

that comes from accepting

that we will not have what we lack;

that whose absence

we may even come to forget.

People disguise it a thousand ways,

but the hunger of the heart persists,

and it is there,

like dust beneath the rug.

Love is a strange serendipity.

The hunger of the heart

cannot be satisfied

with breadcrumbs.

IN THE CIRCUS

In the circus of life

at times I was a clown,

a tamer, perhaps a lion,

a trapeze artist, and my fate

was shared at departure

with the magician and the rabbit.

At times I stood perplexed

by unexpected applause;

the times I was booed

toughened my skin.

Making my way toward old age,

gifted now with hindsight,

I save my words,

rent myself a spyglass.

I expect little and do not let myself

be seduced by hidden dimensions,

nor by the dormant longing

of saudade.

Advice from my years:

live your life and forget.

CYCLICAL REDUNDANCY ERROR

At times I feel I am losing

the joy of living,

that my kindly smile

abandons me, and I forget

how to seek that agreement

between the dream and life,

how to find an exit

from such a barren universe;

daybreak comes ill,

with its poorly served fever.

Assisted melancholy

that comes and goes, unpunished;

loneliness that, among people,

arrives unannounced;

a feeling of farewell,

fatal, subtle, sketched

like a stroke of nothingness

upon the canvas of being;

I try to deny it,

attempting that is my alibi.

I pause in her gaze,

a shiver runs through me;

my blood is a hidden river

flowing into her dwelling;

the presence of that nothingness,

with its stubborn counterpoint,

turns me into a passerby

of an echo I do not endorse;

thus absorbed, for such a reason,

I read a note written in the air.

If life is such a basting stitch

in an unfinished labor,

and only an illusory mind

would believe the thread will not join,

who would not sense,

with a faint fear,

this dialectical error

of cyclical redundancy?

Where might one learn that art

that tames pain?

BLACK CAT

I am that dark cat

they once threw onto a pyre,

that wretch they blamed,

forcing him to pay dearly

for the stain of being impure;

I am the madman of the arcane,

the sub-Saharan albino,

the one who finds no place,

who in his body concentrates

sovereign hatred and fear.

I am the marrano Jew

and the murtad of the mosque,

whom the cleric praises

whoever kills by his own hand.

I have an early instinct

to evade all consensus

—or so I think—;

it is not even my fault

to be the sign of heresy

without a drop of incense.

I am prone to hiding,

understandable if one considers

how much I provoke

anger and intense resentment.

It is not pleasant to be defenseless

nor by the roadside;

perhaps it is my destiny

to distrust multitudes;

I keep my virtues to myself

and the label of a bottle of wine.

THE HABIT OF SILENCE

The habit of keeping silent

seeps so deeply inside

that it rots your core

beyond any healing.

One day you prune your speech

so as not to offend one person;

the next day it is another

who must not be touched,

and thus you sew your mouth shut,

judging it the healthiest choice.

Such is doublethink,

and it is not that I do not know it.

Like a screw, I can speak

of thread and of hole.

I know you may invoke

a humanitarian pretext,

generous, well-meaning, supportive,

but the pretext does not matter:

short-sighted is the one

who imprisons the verb.

The déjà vu is evident:

by canceling the word,

a society fashions

the cynicism of its people.

So much indolent euphemism

serves only to perpetuate

the abyss between thought

and speech the vile lie

that seeps through laughter:

the habit of keeping silent.

21ST-CENTURY ICONOCLASTS

This absurd fashion grows tiresome:

reinventing the past,

keeping a criminal record

for every cause, each more absurd,

anachronistic and boorish

retrospective justice

that drives the rabble mad

with its clumsy frenzy.

And I ask them: well then,

will the future have a franchise?

Easy it is, with foolishness,

to exhume the dead;

among so many blind men

the one-eyed share the spoils.

You profit greatly,

present-day injustice,

judging at breakneck speed

what no longer has a case.

The clown delivers the sentence

upon absent memory.

When what is now ordinary

becomes a rumor of the past,

those who recount it then

will feel ashamed,

for it was deemed pertinent

—more than doing or building—

to rewrite history

to the point of vertigo,

by mediocrities with no glory

and no other excuse for living.

THAT MORNING WHEN YOU LEFT

Half-dead in the penumbra

where oblivion barely survives,

so I force myself to think of you

when some detail demands it,

girl of April, girl,

who still lives beneath my skin

like a crafty souvenir,

surviving simply by returning.

You appear to me suddenly,

even if no one asks for you,

snickering a sadness

that, like a dog, follows me

each time I think of you

and of that room where I loved you

far more than you think

or ever deemed plausible.

Distant afternoons of reverie

that you sold for very little,

though you say it was much

—which I poorly admire—.

Time may disguise it

and make it look otherwise.

It does not matter what you curse today

nor if you later took it back,

those feverish words of yours

—rethinking serves no purpose—,

nor rewarding yourself by thinking

how right you were

to undo that bond,

for it is easy to say

how easily you destroyed

what you loved so much.

Mirror of inconstancy,

my reproach undresses itself;

like your body in my bed,

it provokes me to delirium.

I have rehearsed your burial

so many times that no corpse exists

more exhumed than yours,

and the evidence follows

that it is over, that it was,

that little or nothing remains

—only the echo of a voice

within my voice that stubbornly

refuses to unname you

when the word is impossible—,

remembering an old love,

for something like love you were,

something tremendous and beautiful

that you yourself never knew

how to give a place in your life

that morning when you left.

LEAVING HAVANA

I have no Chinese dog to say goodbye to,

I have no pencil or pen,

my belongings are few.

Homeland is not humanity

—it’s true, Martí said it—

but experience suggests otherwise.

Passports exist,

borders exist.

I look at my mother’s face,

at her many wrinkles;

where I am going,

a woman her age may still be considered young.

I am in our house;

at last I can feel something like affection

when I say “ours.”

She has been

witness to all our miseries,

all our precarious utopias,

all our useless sacrifice.

I stroke the snow in my grandfather’s hair;

he has just turned ninety.

He knows, and I know,

that he will not be able to wait

for me to return and see him again:

he will leave, I will leave, to leave is a must.

I leave my heart behind;

it weighs heavily.

I will think in English,

I will speak in French,

I will try to remember in Spanish.

THOSE KISSES YOU NEVER GAVE

In another way will return

the warmth of a loved one;

those kisses you never gave

will find you, like anyone else.

They will sit beside you,

weaving your well-being;

perhaps they will take time to arrive

or may already be knocking at your door,

with the more-than-certain hope

of being able to love again.

That spring will return,

that living fountain will possess you once more,

and you will again believe yourself

to be living a real dream.

You will feel so special

you will make that love your banner;

spring will return,

even if winter is harsh;

its tender kiss will return,

it will come to you in another way.

THE IMPONDERABLE FACTOR

The imponderable

comes down upon us.

Perhaps they will cut the power.

Perhaps the food will spoil in the “fridge.”

Perhaps the blackout will wreck your appliances.

Perhaps they will broadcast that program

on every channel.

Perhaps prices will rise again.

Perhaps the dollar will fall.

Perhaps it will disappear.

Perhaps they will cut the gas.

Perhaps they will cut the water.

Perhaps the phone will stop working.

Perhaps there will be no transport.

Perhaps that medicine won’t be in the pharmacy.

Perhaps there will be no work, perhaps it will be a holiday.

Perhaps today’s bread will be given tomorrow.

Perhaps an inspector will leave you without a livelihood.

Who can you complain to when life is so far

from being normal?

Who can you reproach when the concept of routine

is not something to break but rather something to rebuild?

There is nothing to be done

—it is the other side

of so many gratuities—,

and those who live by favor

can claim very little.

You can varnish it, but in essence, that is what it is.

Look at the madmen,

look at those people who flood the streets,

interacting with an invisible other,

speaking to an invisible other,

shouting in low voices

things unpublishable.

Ask yourself

whether they might be, perhaps,

the anonymous victims

of the imponderable factor.

WHAT A MADMAN TOLD ME

Do not try to show her how much you love her,

much less how much you need her.

She knows it

but it no longer matters to her.

Do not buy flowers.

Breathe deeply.

Do not ask yourself why this is happening to you

if you are so good,

if once

—and not so long ago—

you both were happy.

Under no circumstances

should you reproach her

for what you sacrificed

or how much you left behind for her.

That will only hurt you,

and besides, it is entirely irrelevant,

because believe me:

if a woman comes to assume

that she deserves something better

than the man she sleeps with,

there is no baseness she will not commit,

no delirium she will not follow.

She will say no one will ever love you again,

she will boast that you won’t be able

to live without her,

she will shout it at you

as she slams the door one last time,

emptying her lungs of arrogance,

that only by a mistake of God

was she ever with you.

You—listen to her words

as one listens to the rain fall,

with the certainty that in the end,

eventually, it will stop.

MY THIRST

What will you say when I tell you

that knowing you from never

was always, and that this truncated

longing that binds us

finds calm in your friendly voice,

finds its foundation in you?

If I blame a premonition

for knowing you would already be there,

can I assume that you would believe

the truths I lie to you about?

What will you say if I tell you

that my eyes remember you?

Even if my veins disagree

on which century or which moment,

I loved you in the fury of the wind

when the Sahara was a sea,

I have sought you without ceasing

across oceans of time.

My thirst is quenched untimely

when I lose myself in your gaze.

NIGHT OF THE FOOLS’ DAY

I have forgotten you.

PROFESSION

It is more than permissible

to die for love in a poem,

to die of full anguish in every stanza,

to be the child of Guatemala

and to alchemize sadness

into a way of life,

as long as you keep

some vital, clandestine courage

where no one can see it,

as long as you do not forget

that, eventually,

you will have to face

life

with courage in your bones.

PEOPLE

People you met on the road, those people

who, when you see them, 

you do not question

how they change your destiny,

by naming your missteps

and making you understand them,

kind beings who yesterday,

for a few brief moments,

were light in their attempts

to help you grow.

How could it happen

that you never saw them again?

How to express the way

they made themselves loved?

That hug, that knowing

that infiltrated your reason,

their mark on your heart,

distant, but not lost,

a beautiful legacy in your life:

healing you was their mission.

You are kept awake by the impression

that gratitude was lacking

to compensate for such virtue

in its proper measure,

that there was no occasion

or that it was only an instant.

Such is our wandering life

through those paths of God:

to live is only a goodbye

with a discreet expression.

STONE IN THE WATER

Like a stone in water

today it falls, I say your name,

it comes out just like that, not that I’m surprised,

it breaks the crystal liquid;

concentric ripples it traces,

wider as they move away,

they disappear, leaving

no trace at the end.

Your ghost is still at home,

naked on my bed,

your absence pains my chest

so badly, Malenaly badly.

It will hurt much more

without me expecting an answer,

and though forgetting you is hard,

the stone and your name swallow the water,

you disappear, woman.

POEM TO A WOMAN OF FORGOTTEN NAME

Except for your name, everything returns to my mind

except your name; and I try to recall it 

but in vain. I strive to find it. 

It gets lost, dissolves among the people

I once knew and today I do not recognize.

That repeated name I loved,

ancient echo of a voice where your presence dwelled,

the mutual yesterday. I know it

but the letters get lost if I try

to capture that desire that today bites me

absurd and voracious, anachronistic and stubborn,

spring, memory, autumn of man.

How incredible the irony, that I remember

so many things, oh woman, except your name.

ROLLING OVER BUKOWSKI

All the women

all their kisses

the different ways

they come and go

how they tie you to their sex

or rather, how they tie themselves to your very

sex and don’t let go

or leave it tangled like a necktie knot.

It was one of those places

that stay open even at dawn.

I was sleepless

and went to sit there just to drink

and I went to sit there to drink alone

like a dog

that can’t wait for sunrise,

away from lights and noise

and alone,

abandoned even by fleas.

They played an Bad Bunny song

you can imagine what kind of

place it was.

The image of a man alone

drinking

alone

in a place like that

I suppose couldn’t help

but look pathetic

and there was

also

a black woman

fat as Diogenes’ barrel

dancing a bit drunk with two other black men

blacker than evil

and

suddenly she came to my table

wanted to sell me Chinese ointment.

I don’t know how she could have imagined that I was looking for

Chinese ointment

of all things

but she came to sell me that precisely: Chinese ointment

good for pain

—she said—

headaches

and if your soul aches

rub it on your chest

and she indicated with her finger

a vague spot

slightly to the left

of her ample

breasts.

“Did they leave you?” –she asked

don’t worry, Chinese dude

another will show up

and it’s true

there’s always another

and maybe that

is the worst part

but I didn’t say that.

In fact, I said

nothing.

She took the bill 

and tucked it

between her ample

breasts.

It hasn’t worked

but still

from time to time

I rub

a bit of Chinese

ointment

on the left

side of my chest.

IF THERE IS A TOMORROW

When I see you again, my love, if there is a tomorrow,

we’ll pretend that the time apart was brief

and, at the bright moment of recognizing each other,

we’ll love each other as much as that desire lasts.

I will redeem your breasts from unjust oppression,

the cruel prison they suffer under treacherous lace;

I will sip your nipples with a kiss that does justice,

I will descend to profane the pubic mound if you so wish.

Cradled between your thighs you will see me smiling,

full of light like the sun entering its home,

and you will be the burning moon

in the supportive flame

where wisdom and madness unite in love.

I will love you without reason, without excuse or window,

when I see you again, my love, if there is a tomorrow.

SONNET OF QUIET DESIRE

I wish to be the light in your gaze,

a reflection of a love that does not hide,

a home for a heartbeat that replies

to the dream of your enamored skin.

To lose myself in your awakened stillness,

to feel that in your warmth the world is light,

and in each embrace of yours, soft and brief,

to find the eternity of our life.

I seek nothing more than to be who accompanies you,

who breaks your silences without breaking you,

who, without ceasing to see you, misses you all the more.

And if desire blazes to touch you,

I will be the faithful breeze that does not harm you,

yet knows how to burn with love just by looking at you.

SONNET FOR A FLOWER

“Nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands.” 

—E. E. Cummings—

I dream of the feverish, electrifying touch

of her tiny body in the embrace,

the current that runs down my spine

from feeling her heartbeat beside me.

And I dream even more: her gazelle-like eyes,

the sensual caress in her glance,

which, with its silent language, says nothing

and in its spoken silence, reveals everything.

I even dream of that rose surrendering

like an echo invoking distant echoes,

an ancient echo of a flower resurrected.

I still dream, from which language is limited.

Beautiful flower, with hands so small

they could resemble the rain.

A DRAW

What a gift you give me

by giving yourself like this,

so clean,

so whole,

so woman,

leaving me no other option

but to love you,

woman,

but to love you.

And while my mind 

exhaustively thinks of you,

it wanders and I become a hammer

plunging into your cracks,

and I am back in you,

we become one again,

on this very sofa

where now my children play.

Excluding the bed for sleeping

where most mortals

usually make love,

we made it in every place

we could 

in this house.

Bound to me her body,

bound to hers mine,

we flew,

let’s admit it,

we burned

like the candle

and the fire

without consuming ourselves.

I was Odysseus without ropes

and left my ship behind,

and forgot my kingdom.

I surrendered to the siren

and we sang her songs

while we had breath.

I was devoured inch by inch

by her hungry,

by her loving mouth,

I was returned to life

and I do not want her without her.

How tender it is

to see you in the depths

of her eyes that caress

and hear her beautiful voice

naming you,

asking

in whispers for more love,

papi,

more love,

all that you have

where beast and divine

are already one

and forever

without ceasing 

to be two,

man and woman,

as at the beginning.

What a delightful circumstance

to feel so virile

like a wild colt

mated with his fevered mare

and at the same time so small

and so fragile

like a child

whose mother

gives him shelter in an embrace.

What a happy grammar

to love you like this,

resoundingly,

in the present perfect —I cannot say less—

compound —by us—

of the indicative mood

and not in that elusive,

nebulous,

unfriendly

past perfect

of the subjunctive mood.

We call it a draw, my love,

we call it a draw.

PERHAPS

Perhaps I will never see

the Iguazú Falls.

Perhaps I won’t be able to go

to the pyramids of Egypt

or to Teotihuacán.

Perhaps it won’t be granted to me

to travel to the Roman Colosseum,

nor to the Great Wall of China,

nor even to return

to that village in Galicia.

Perhaps I won’t manage to walk

the Camino de Santiago,

nor ride once again

that streetcar in Lisbon.

Perhaps I won’t be able

to sit

by the mouth of the Tagus river

and deliriously believe I still see

ships passing

along that immense wall

saline and distant

of Havana.

It will hurt me, no doubt.

There are so many perhaps

opposed to the I wish and the I could,

that sometimes I fear

death may win the pulse;

and yet one must love life

beyond oneself,

one must live it,

one must try while one can,

one must drink it

like the most expensive of wines,

as if the end did not exist,

as if the end did not matter.

TIME

Technically speaking,

it is true that the time in our lives

during which we will inevitably live

without love

tends to be, quantitatively,

greater than that other time,

the luminous time

in which love will enter your life

making you believe —if you allow it—

that this time

it has no intention of leaving.

I know it, you know it, we know it:

everything is nothing more than an illusion.

And yet,

the little or much time,

technically speaking,

during which that thing called love

inhabits the seconds,

the minutes of your hours,

will be far more precious,

a much more unavoidable time,

qualitatively superior,

and it will never —never—

stop inhabiting you

like that mad longing

for a land

to which you will always

dream of returning.

EVERYTHING, NOTHING, AND ALL AT ONCE

My oxymoronic friend,

how little it is that you ask of me:

that I forget when you do not forget,

remember when your beautiful mouth

tells me to go on

forever in a maybe

or in a never and its reverse,

without conflict and without agreement,

something mad yet sensible,

everything, nothing, and all at once.

Your demands, as you see,

are easily attainable;

I won’t even say impossible

like the wings of a fish,

they possess such candor

that it leaves us speechless,

lucid and confused

by the most obvious mystery

—hilarious for how serious it is—

of waking up while asleep.

In conclusion, your requests

are fulfilled on the spot,

although tomorrow I suspect,

without delay or forgetfulness,

they will be granted to you

because they can never be;

you have made me understand,

leaving me no doubt,

needing no further help,

what a woman wants.

STILL

Almost half a century on my ribs,

and still I am capable of thinking

like an adolescent

about a woman I barely know,

of whom I only know a name or two,

and little more,

very little more than that.

Still foolish enough

to claim

that I remember having seen her

in some remote corner of my dreams,

that I shipwrecked on her lips

thousands of years ago,

that I have been searching for her ever since

without relief or consolation,

as if the very tribunal

of my relentless reason

were capable of absolving me,

as if such nostalgia for heaven

were acceptable.

TOXIC

Toxic.

I am a toxic man.

I wear it with pride

in a world

as trivial

as it is foolish.

I believe

in friendship

and in love.

I care about people.

I don’t flow.

I’m not light.

I don’t perceive myself

as anything other

than what I have been:

I am a man,

and I live

in a digital world

of zeros and ones,

of likes 

and little hearts,

but mine

still beats

—and will keep beating—

in analogical mode.

I am

fed up

with pleases and thank-yous,

with euphemisms,

lies,

and social engineering.

I don’t want

to see the future;

I’ve seen enough.

I will be happy

not to see more

of whatever the damn Fates

have assigned for me.

I will die,

and everyone who remembers me

will die shortly after.

Time is relative

and it won’t make much difference.

The millennials

will inherit the earth.

YOUR ABSENCE AND I

How hard it is to forget you—

it’s not a matter of a single day,

nor do I find a philosophy

that helps me unname you.

I almost force myself to think of you

as an imaginary being;

that way I avoid the stage

where I might lie about an encounter.

I carry your absence so deep within

that we speak every day.

It may seem obvious,

the absurdity of writing to you

as if there were still something

that needed to be said.

The calendar will decide

whether this saudade persists,

whether tomorrow dresses itself

in joy or in failure,

whether I will perhaps forget

so much love you once gave me.

ONE ALMOST

One almost forgets

how alone one is

and could live like that,

without it being

good or bad

—just

life—.

And yet,

in the middle

of a conversation,

without warning,

the caress of a pair of eyes,

the precise

word of a voice,

the unexpected compliance

of a sudden, unmistakable

complicity

pull you out of that

—your accepted reality—

and you end up writing

a poem

for no reason at all,

from the abyss

of that tunnel toward a world

of uncomfortable passions

in which

you no longer live.

SIXTEEN YEARS

I had never seen

a cunt

open

before my eyes.

Of course, I knew the manuals

from German Democratic Republic,

manually performed

one or two films

from the cinemas, and also

—why not confess it?—

I had my share of hand games with girls,

but I was never a lucky guy

with girls in adolescent uniforms.

I’m not good at persuading anyone,

and to make matters worse I was also

a clusterfuck teenager

—pathetic

and without any sense of humor—.

My father

was a Party cadre.

My mother

was a Party cadre.

And I painted cuadros (paintings)

at the art school

—processing centers that bottle

the incipient souls

of the great masters of the future—.

Then she arrived

—a model from the school where I painted cuadros—.

Clinical cuadro (picture).

My God, she was brutally beautiful

whore’s mouth,

doe’s eyes,

hard breasts,

immense haunches,

and sex like the manuals

—that is, if we understand

the furtive relationship

between the student’s eye

and the model

placed

at the prudent distance

of several meters—.

I think everyone desired her.

She was, I repeat, brutally beautiful.

Well, I must add that I wrote poems

and recycled that alimentary bolus,

not fully digested,

where one could notice at a glance

a bit of Silvio,

a bit of old Nicolás,

without songoros ni cosongos,

and Roque and the others—

Nogueras and Nazim 

Hikmet.

One is more or less

what one listens to

or reads,

and I made it known

(to perhaps too many people)

that I wrote

and what I wrote.

I don’t know how she found out,

and read those poems that later,

scrupulously,

I destroyed.

But then

—and still—

there she was,

standing in front of me.

“I really like what you write,” she said.

She spoke of maturity,

was surprised by my age.

I think she must have been

ten years older, no less,

and I infer that she called maturity

my affected 

appropriation of axioms.

I assume

my borrowed modesty

kept me from responding with anything

other than some stupid phrase,

stupidly clever,

hanging

from her nipples

—hard, stony, bursting

under the robe she wore during breaks—.

Sometimes

we coincided again, without consequence,

at that same hour,

on that same bench between shifts

until that afternoon

when she said something

so

sovereignly ridiculous as:

“I’d like

to love you.”

And I answered like a mature man

—that is,

I said nothing—

to that woman

sit in front of me

whore’s mouth,

doe’s eyes,

hard breasts,

immense haunches.

The bell rang.

I lost even apparent calm,

lost concentration,

lost professionalism.

Fortunately the last shift ended.

I walked her near her house

like that mature man

I clearly was not.

No words.

No explanations.

Nothing.

Just a kiss near the lips

on that corner

where she decided to go on alone.

“I’ll wait for you,” she said,

“tomorrow.”

I don’t know how I managed

to sleep until “tomorrow.”

When I reached her door,

when she opened it,

when she let me in beyond it

her clothes were suddenly gone,

her body suddenly no longer 

upright

by the door

but stretched on the bed

like earth waiting for rain,

open

like a wild animal.

Then

I saw it clearly.

Then

I saw her jaws.

I saw the beast waiting,

smiling slightly before swallowing me

like Jonah, like Pinocchio.

Lips,

siblings of other lips,

and around them the forest,

the incipient wolf,

the old man, the new man,

the green man,

the mature man,

the rotten man

—always the man—

and

the abyss at the center, almost wet,

completely warm,

pulling me in

with all its blessed

strength.

When it was over,

we had coffee.

She lit a cigarette

for us both.

My coughing betrayed me;

the smoke 

was more honest than the writer vain everything except

her cunt forever in my head,

and in other cunts, near and far battles,

women.

“Is it your first time?” —she couldn’t not ask—.

The coffee was bitter

—I mean: bitter—.

“Yes,” I couldn’t not answer.

We never saw each other again.

She never posed again,

naked

and aseptic.

She never passed again,

naked

and burning.

What remained was oblivion

—futile, a little fatal—

and the sliding words,

the absurd consolation

of one,

of another,

impossible date.

It was

her turn to act.

She dressed,

recycled herself, adjusted

her makeup

in front of me

whore’s mouth,

doe’s eyes,

hard breasts,

immense haunches.

VI

I saw the evil of relativism

praised in academia;

I saw virtue grow anemic;

I saw hedonism bloom,

felt the abyss spread out

beneath my feet.

I saw kindness corrupted

to flatter the stupidity

of the mob and its justice,

and still there was more to see.

I saw a tyrant moved to tears

denouncing genocide,

while from his vile prison

not a leaf could move;

I saw the terrorist sell himself

as a freedom fighter;

I saw the UN a stage

for circus buffoonery,

useful idiots, herds

from the university pasture.

I saw the Devil put on payroll

eminent intellectuals;

I saw postcolonial bards

declaim their corollaries

of fallacies;

I saw the fraud cancel the dissenter;

I saw more. I saw

how common it is

to silence another by assigning him 

some derogatory label.

I saw the wickedness of people,

their sores and their lies;

I saw all reason burned

on the bonfire;

I saw the unrepentant racist

pose as anti-racist;

I saw, in his optimistic plan,

phony philanthropists;

I saw a world full of zeros,

and of ones at first glance.

I saw the perpetual opportunist

perform his balancing act;

I saw Marxism as a bastardized

foreskin of the Islamofascism;

I saw the globalist spawn;

I saw the subsidized scream;

I saw that the family

is the enemy of state power;

I saw the god of pedophilia;

I saw Jesus Christ aborted.

THE URGENCY OF A BORDER

To bid farewell to the year

and let it go without sorrow,

I sketch this verse lightly

to weigh the damage

and the benefit, the rung

where what was forgotten remains,

passed over, excommunicated,

expired, or whatever you wish.

I must give to twenty-six

the best I have saved.

It is not little what I have achieved,

nor less what I have lost:

some dear friend,

more than one broken affection;

but I have also enjoyed

the small joys

of friendship, the intricate

twists of fortune,

and that love never dead:

the smile of my children.

Searching the recesses

of what the future holds,

I no longer find what to say

nor give value to riddles.

To stare fixedly into its eyes

might blind us like the sun;

I renounce to any flag

that denies life a voice.

I find, in this farewell,

the urgency of a border.