REVELATIONS // may your body always be a beloved space for revelations.

PRESENCE // turn me into a boat on a river of stones a rain isolated in my fevered silence

OBLIVION // on the other edge of the night love is possible take me there take me to the sweet essences that die each day in your memory

WORKS AND NIGHTS // i’ve been the full offering the pure wandering of a wolf in the woods on the night of the bodies to speak the innocent word

MEANING OF HER ABSENCE // shadow linked so gently to my name

MEMORY LOSS // i recall with all my lives my reasons for forgetting.

DEAF LANTERN // all night long i make the night. all night long i write. word by word i am writing the night.

PRIVILEGE // the most beautiful of all on the night of those who leave me: you whom i long for, how endless your not-returning, you as shadow till the day of days.

WINTER TALE // the light of the wind through the pines: do i understand such signs of incandescent sadness?

THAT OTHER SUNRISE // grey and heavy voices calling out from the former site of my heart.

UNFOUNDING // grey birds in the early morning are to the closed window what this poem is to my pain.

FRAGMENTS FOR SUBDUING THE SILENCE // i listen and the sweetness of your crying opens into to my grey silence.

and i will not say my poem and i will say it. even if (here, now) the poem has no meaning, no fate.

A DREAM IN WHICH SILENCE IS GOLDEN // i have had many loves, i said, but of all these, the greatest was my love of mirrors.

RESCUE // and it’s always the lilac garden on the other side of the river. if the soul should ask you if that is far from here, you should say, on the other side of the river, not this one, but the one over there.

BEING // no silence here, only phrases you try not to hear.

(don’t let me die without seeing you again.)

THE PROMISES OF MUSIC // or to the speech of that woman i happen to be, bound to this silent creature who is also me. and may nothing of me remain except the happiness of the one who knocked and for whom the door was opened.

CONTINUITY // cure me of this void, i said. (the light loved itself in this darkness of mine. i knew that there was absence when i found myself saying, it is i.) cure me, i said.

SUMMER GOODBYES // the sound of things ruined by the wind. they come to me as if i were the heart of all that exists. i would like to be dead, and also to go inside another heart.

PATHS OF THE MIRROR // as when a flower opens and you see the heart it does not have.

cover the memory of your face with the mask of who you’ll become, and frighten the girl you used to be.

and thirst. my memory is of the thirst — of me, below, in the depths, in the well — and that i drank from it, i remember.

but the silence is certain. this is why i write. i am alone and i write. no, i am not alone. there is someone here who is trembling.

even if i say sun or moon or star, this is still about things that happen to me.

and what was it i wanted? i wanted a perfect silence. this is why i speak.

the pleasure of losing yourself in the image foreseen. i rose from my body and went out in search of who i am. a pilgrim of my self, i have gone to the one who sleeps in the winds of her country.

where no one expected me, since when i looked to see who expected me, i saw no thing other than my self.

something falling in the silence. my final word was i, but by this i meant the luminous dawn.

to return to the body’s memory is to return to my mourning bones, and to grasp what it is my voice says.

EXTRACTING THE STONE OF MADNESS // if only you could see the one who is sleeping without you in the ruined garden of my memory.

who gave that to you? who anointed you? who consecrated you? the invisible inhabitants of earliest memory. lost of your own doing, you have exchanged your realm for ashes. whoever gives you pain reminds you of the homage that others used to pay you. but still you sob tragically and call upon your madness, and you would go so far as to have it removed — this thing, your last remaining privilege — as if it were a stone.

but don’t speak of gardens. don’t speak of the moon. don’t speak of roses or of the sea. speak of what you know. speak of the thing that rings in the marrow, that plays in your eyes with shadow and light. speak of the endless ache in your bones. speak of vertigo. speak of respiration and of desolation and of your treason. it’s so dark, so silent, this process that grips me. just speak of the silence.

i searched for some memory of happiness that could shield me, that could serve me as armor, as a weapon.

all i want is silence, for myself and for the selves i used to be, a silence like the magical cottage in the forest that lost children find in fairy tales. what am i supposed to know of what is to become of me, in the absence of rhyme or reason?

i cannot live without the waters’ forgiveness. i cannot die without the marble lid of heaven closing. it’s night inside of you. soon you’ll witness the rearing up of the brave animal that you are. heart of night: i ask you to speak_. to die inside the person you were once and to die inside the person you loved, to have turned and not have turned, like a blue but storm-filled sky. i would’ve wanted more than this, but also nothing.

this eager voice of mine comes from old laments. how innocent you are: you wear the costume of a young assassin, yet you scare yourself in the mirror. lower me into the ground, and let the ground close in. you know that they’ve humiliated you, even when they showed you the sun. you know that you’ll never know how to defend yourself, that all you want is to give them the trophy — i mean your corpse — and to have them drink from it and pick it clean.

what if all of a sudden a painting should come to life and the florentine boy inside it whom you’d been studying intently should reach out his hand and invite you to live by his side, to accept the terrible honor of becoming an object that is seen and admired. no (i said), in order for us to be two, each of us has to be different. i am outside the frame, but the way we offer ourselves is the same.

and what about you? you emerge from your lair and don’t understand. you leave again and it doesn’t matter if you don’t understand. there’s no air, yet you speak of the breath of gods.

every hour, every day, i wish i didn’t have to speak. everyone is made of wax, and me most of all. i am more other than the others. what i want from this poem is the loosening of my throat.

what does it mean to translate yourself into words? and what about the long-held projects of self-perfection? every day you measure the approximate elevation of my spirit, and the disappearance of my grammatical mistakes. mine is a dream without an alternative, and i want to die to the letter of the law of the commonplace, where we are assured that dying is the same as dreaming. the light, the forbidden wine, the vertigo. who is it you write for? the ruins of an abandoned temple. If only celebration were possible.

if i’d had it close at hand, i would’ve traded in my soul to be invisible. drunk on myself, on music; drunk on poems and on (why not just say it) the void of absence. in a ragged hymn, the tears rolled down my face. why doesn’t anyone say anything? why the great silence?

THE DREAM OF DEATH, OR THE SITE OF THE POETICAL BODIES // death is calling me down by the river. with a torn heart, desolate, i listen to that song of purest happiness.

and it’s true that i’ve woken up in the place of love, because as soon as i heard its song, i said, this is the place of love. and it’s true that i’ve woken up in the place of love, because i heard its song with a smile of pain and told myself, this is the place of love (if trembling, if phosphorescent).

i saw an adolescent clown and told him that in my poems death was my lover and my lover was death, and he said, “your poems speak the truth." i was sixteen and had no choice but to search for absolute love. and it was in the tavern by the pier where she sang her song. i write with my eyes shut. i write with my eyes wide open. let the wall fall down. let the wall turn into a river.

and i would wander across all the deserts of this world, even after death, to search for you — you who were the place of love.

A NIGHT SHARED IN A MEMORY OF ESCAPE // and how many centuries has it been since i’ve been dead and loved you?

i speak of the irreparable, i ask for nothing less than the irreparable

a song that doesn’t speak of life or death, but of the slightest gesture, of the most imperceptible sign of acquiescence, a song that isn’t quite a song, a song like the drawing of a little house beneath a sun that’s missing some of its rays.

CORNERSTONE // to swallow the night in its very silence (which is not to say every silence) — a night that’s immense, and immersed in the stealth of lost footsteps.

i can’t just speak and say nothing. that’s how we lose ourselves, the poem and i, in the hopeless attempt to write the things that burn.

(you who were my only country: where should i look for you? maybe in this poem as i write it.)

(and he said unto me: write, for these words are faithful and true.)

i thought i had died and that death meant repeating a name forever.

i will drink from you until the night opens. no one can save me. i’m invisible even to myself. here i am, calling to myself with your voice. where am i? i am in a garden.

there is a garden.

NAMES AND SHAPES // waiting for nothing but music and allowing the pain — the pain that vibrates in forms too beautiful and treacherous — to reach down into the depths.

we’ve attempted to forgive ourselves for what we didn’t do — the fantastic offenses, the phantom blame. for the sea mist, for no one, for the shadows — for this we made amends.

what I want is to honor the keeper of my shadow, the one who draws names and shapes out of nothing.

DIRGES // they caught up with it in the heart of the word, and it’s impossible to describe the space — absent, blue — left by its eyes.

the sign of her existence is the mournful writing in the messages she sends to herself. she tests herself in her new language and weighs the man’s corpse on the scale of her heart.

for an excess of suffering, an excess of night, of silence.

and i, alone with my voices — and you, so far on the other side that i confuse you with myself.

THE POSSESSED AMONG THE LILACS // maybe someday we will find refuge in true reality. in the meantime, can i just say how opposed I am to all of this?

IN HONOR OF A LOSS // of myself i should say that i am impatient to be given an end less tragic than the silence. fierce happiness when i find an image that alludes to me. from my devastated breathing i say: let there be language where there ought to be silence.

and you didn’t want to recognize me when i told you of the thing in me that was you. the old terror has returned: of speaking nothing with no one.

if you love me, i will know it even if i don’t live.

sell off your light, the heroism of your future days. the light is an excess of too many things that are too far away.

SMALL PROSE POEMS // in love with the words that create small nights in the uncreatedness of the day and its ferocious void.

THE SILENT SKY-BLUE WOMAN AT THE EDGE OF THE SWAMP // i am your silence, your tragedy, your watcher. though i’m only night, though every night of my life is yours.

GHOSTLY MEMORIAL // horror of searching for your eyes in the space that is full of the screams of this poem.

[...] OF THE SILENCE // oh the infernal color of my passions. but i remained captive to the ancient tenderness.

each word that i write restores me to the absence for which i write what i would not write if i let you come here.

and no one understands. all my life waits for you. and nevertheless, i search for the night of the poem. i only think of your body but i redo the body of my poem like someone who tries to cure her own wound.

THE NIGHT, THE POEM // my words demand silence and abandoned spaces.

there are words with hands; barely written, they search my heart.

oh my love, call to me with a name that is linked to an old, forgotten tenderness. i am going to reconstruct the plot of an entirely internal tragedy.

A WORD // in loving silence she starts singing the song for the reclining figure.

ON A POEM BY RUBÉN DARÍO // the one who didn’t know how to die of love and so couldn’t learn a thing.

SHADOW PREFACE (I) // at the same time, she is looking for ways to warm her begging heart.

no one turns on any lamp for me, no one is the color of deepest desire.

SHADOW TEXT // i want to exist beyond myself: with the embodied ones. i want to exist as what i am: as a fixed idea. i want to bark, instead of praising the silence of the space you’re born into.

unspeakably, i fall into this thing i find more or less present in myself when someone pronounces my name.

PSYCHOPATHOLOGY WARD // but what happened (to kafka) is the same as what happened to me: he withdrew he went too far into solitude and knew — he must’ve known — you never come back from there

— i just can’t anymore, soul, my little nonexistent, decide for yourself: either you get out or you stay but don’t touch me like this, with dread, with confusion, either you leave or you get lost, as for me, i just can’t anymore.

ALLIANCE // she abandons herself to an excessive way of thinking and to a spell for a defined space: a place that functions as a call to something.

it’s like asking me for the moon. i tell myself: if someone is asking for the moon, it’s because they need it. but if (let’s say) i take them the moon, they’ll say something that won’t sound good at all. besides, there’s the other thing, the other thing. (“if i died right here and now how happy i would be”) if i died.

SOUS LA NUIT // all night long you abandon me slowly like water falling slowly. all night long i write, to look for the one who looks for me.

ONLY THE NIGHTS // space of disaffectation where you don’t know what to do with so much lack of want.

i, the sad waiting for a word to name the thing i look for and what am i looking for? not the name of the deity not the name of the names but the precise and precious names of my hidden desires

please, don’t think i am mourning myself. if you only understood the voluptuousness of confirming

and now, i think i love and i feel finished, epilogued. how to learn the basic gestures of elementary passions?

i just came to see the garden where someone was dying on account of something that never happened or of someone who never came.

sad when i desire and when i don’t. sad when with a body and when without. sad when with a smile and when without.

MEMORIES OF THE LITTLE HOUSE OF SONG // i have taken apart what they never gave me, which was all i had.

i have felt love and they mistreated it, yes, me, i who had never loved. the deepest love will disappear forever. what can we love that isn’t a shadow? the sacred dreams of childhood have already died, and with them those of nature, which loved me.

WRITTEN IN THE TWILIGHT // — he takes me. that it looks like dying. that i look like anguish.

I SPEAK TO YOU // i am frightened. the thing i feared most has come over me. i am not in trouble: i am not able to bear it anymore.

WRITTEN IN ANAHUAC (TALITHA) // earth or mother or death: do not abandon me, even if i have abandoned myself.

...AL ALBA VENID... // no longer being able to want to live without knowing what will live in place of me

when night becomes my memory my memory will be the night.

the night is me and we have lost. that’s how i speak, you cowards. night has fallen and everything has been thought of now.

THE GREEN TABLE // masks of night from a lost place that only i have known.

AND WHAT TO THINK OF SILENCE? — to sleep yes, and to work a few days with the dream, sparing myself silence. must reverse the course of so many things in such scant time, take this long trip in such scant time. they tell me: choose the silence or the dream. but i agree with my wide-open eyes going toward – going toward, never vacillating from – this zone of voracious light that will devour your eyes. you want to go, you must go. little phantom trip. a few days of constrained draw on your gaze. it’ll be as always. same pain, this disaffection, this non-love. we die of fatigue here. we’d love to offer ourselves as quickly as possible. someone has invented this sinister plan: a return to the archaic gaze, a going toward the expectation figured by two blue eyes in the black dust. silence is temptation and promise. finale of my initiation. beginning of every end. it’s of myself i speak. it happens to be necessary to go only once to see if just once again you’ll be granted the vision. we die of fatigue here. we’d rather not move. we’re exhausted. each bone and each limb recalls its archaic sufferings. we suffer and crawl, dance, we drag ourselves. someone has promised. it’s of myself i speak. someone can’t take it anymore.

IF FOR ONCE AGAIN the blue gaze inside this sack full of dust – i speak of myself, i have the right – this expectation, this patience – if for once again – who understands me? – i speak of broken toys, of a black sack, of an expectation, i speak of myself, i can do it, i ought to do it. if everything i call doesn’t come to me just once again, someone will have to laugh, someone will have to toast with an atrocious joke – i speak of dust riven with sullen light, blue eyes patiently marking time. Who understands me? just once again the small hand among broken toys, regard of her who waits, listens, understands. blue eyes as a response to this death right next to me, which speaks to me and is me.

ALL DAY LONG i hear the noise of moaning water. my memory, my bloody place, my archaic angel bitten by the wind. all day i sleep moaning while words fall like shredded water, i fall moaning, i remember the water’s noise falling through my dream of you. all night i listen to the steps of something coming for me. all night i delineate in my eyes the form of your eyes. all night i’m swimming your waters, drowning in my eyes become your eyes. all night i speak with your voice and tell myself what you silence. all night you rain over me, rain of water-hands that drown me. all night and all day long i contemplate the blue stains on a wall, each passing hour pining for the obscene word that will form your face. i don’t abandon this place of recognition, only relinquish it when you arrive.

and all day long i sleep moaning. i remember the wind, all night i think of the wind that comes to me and abides in me. my memory, a frenetic bird on the gray beach under the cold wind that comes and comes on again and won’t leave. the wind in me, you in me, all night i cry remembering the water falling and the cold shore under the gray wind. shere is your archaic knowledge? – they ask me. where is your silence? all night i hear the noise of my weeping face. and it’s the course to your natal place, to your pure suffering. all night under the unknown rain. to me they’ve offered one silence full of forms – you say. and you go off desolate as the sole bird in the wind.

ALL NIGHT i hear the noise of water sobbing. all night i make night in me, i make the day that begins on my account, that sobs because day falls like water through night.

all night i hear the voice of someone seeking me out. all night you abandon me slowly like the water that sobs slowly falling. all night i write luminous messages, messages of rain, all night someone checks for me and i check for someone.

all night i see that abandonment is me, that the sole sobbing voice is me. we can search with lanterns, cross the shadow’s lie. we can feel the heart thud in the thigh and water subside in the archaic site of the heart.

all night i ask you why. all night you tell me no.

SEX, NIGHT // once again, someone falls in their first falling – fall of the two bodies, of the two eyes, of four green eyes or eight green eyes if we count those born in the mirror (at midnight, in the purest fear, in loss), you haven’t been able to recognize the voice of your dull silence, to behold the earthly messages scrawled in the middle of one mad state, when the body is a glass and from ourselves and from the other we drink some sort of impossible water.

sometimes we suffer too much reality in the space of a single night.

we’ve fallen so completely into jaws which couldn’t fathom this sacrifice, this condemnation of my seeing eyes.

i speak of burying everyday fear to secure the fear of an instant. the abyss of absence. but who’ll say: don’t cry at night? because madness is a lie too. like night. like death.

WORDS OF THE WIND, a red horse careens across the memory of ancient wailing nights. evil emerges from my memorious eyes. the world given form as a cry. how i would have loved to see myself some other night, beyond this madness of being both sides of the mirror. means of seeing, the opened eyes glimpse the dissolving trace. a red horse foretells choleric seasons. chewing the end of its name, we lose ourselves in the memory of a howl. if everything is like that, where are the kings of unknowing? i bend myself around the galloping hour, the hour of cries that drag me after them, captive to a single trace, i hear the sound of what beats down the wind. horse of ire, bear me far from myself. far from this cry that stands in for night.

NAKED // night blindly mine. you’re farther gone than me. horror of checking for you in the screams of my poem. your name is the disease of things at midnight. they had promised me one silence. your face is closer to me than my own.

I CHECK FOR YOU IN THE WIND. you’re not a cry. but i check for you in the wind.

night opens me and it’s you.

return once again. your inexpressible face revealed to me the inner tearing. your eyes blind everything, even the night, your name written inside me.

return as ever. your eyes are my only conveyance to death’s other face.

each word is you begging to utter it. each word is the long invitation to memory.

return, while night clatters and mirrors open and everything tears inside because of your absence. everything wants to get on with the wind, the sky. to register a terrible gesture, some way of being without you, an impossible.

your eyes begin in my eyes which no longer see you. begin in my voice which no longer speaks to you. die out in my hands which no longer touch you. your eyes are inscribed in my flesh. no one can bear to see me now. sinister tattoo. i do the rain, i do the sun. for want of your eyes in my eyes.

YOUR LOVER // don’t forget your eyes because i inhabit them

(the sense of things remains in the intensity of their names)

WITH CRYSTAL CHORDS I PLAY LOVE’S VERY TUNE in soft falling rain that allays my wound