Nocturne 2

"Night breathes,
it flaps its clear spaces,
its criatures in piddling noises,
in the slight creak of woods,
betray themselves.
Night renovates
a certain hidden seed
inside the ferocious mine that holds us.
With its lethal milk
it feeds us
a life that lengthens
beyond all morning awakening
at the world´s edges.
The night that breathes
our gentle breath of beaten
preserves us and protects us
"for higher destinies"."
--Álvaro Mutis, "The lost works", (Los trabajos perdidos).

Álvaro Mutis

Requiescat in pace for this writer who will now stir people, and specially readers--in different ways, of course--from their indifference and quietness regarding his work. Death is, as seen, a good chance for life to notice life, isn't that poetic? Haven't you been pondering around this while I was dealing with money issues and left this blog to its luck?

Perhaps. I, for instance, and not to say about the whole corporation of unemployed creatures that feed this page, never wondered about Álvaro´s life before his unlucky--unlucky?--ending. And here we are. Such a shame, eh?, the fact that artists work for posthumous fame and recognition.

And they might not even get that much. Statistics would confirm, and I´m fishing blind here, that artists die all the time, at a rate of some dozens per second. Indeed, we could say artists hardly matter, since there are too many. You could say the same regarding humans, but it wouldn't matter anyway.

From a background of well prized and sizable artists that drown in their own number, here he is. One more of the already large list of writers who could have been close to get a Nobel.

Many have read him; read him as if you were getting something else out of it: as if poetry cared, when poetry is dispensable.

Tough guys don´t dance.

"Tough guys don't dance.
Tough guys arrive to bordering towns at dusk
Tough guys have no money, they waste money, look for some money
at tiny humid rooms.
Tough guys don't wear pyjamas
Tough guys have large and hard cocks that time cuts and softens
Tough guys grab their cocks with one hand and take long leaks over
cliffs and deserts
Tough guys travel on cargo trains throughout the large spaces
of Northamerica.
The large spaces of B series movies.
Violent movies in which the major is infamous and the sheriff a son of a bitch and things
are going from bad to worse
Till tough guys appear shooting all over the place
Chests broken by thick caliber bullets get projected
towards us
like hosts of ultimate redemption
Tough guys make love with waitresses
in poorly decorated women rooms
And leave before sunrise.
Tough guys travel on miserable transportations throughout
large spaces of Latin America
Tough guys share the landscapes of the journey and
the melancholy of the journey with pigs and hens.
Behind, they leave forests, plains, mountains like
shark teeth, nameless rivers, vain efforts
Tough guys gather up memory crumbs
without complaining
We've eaten, they say, we've fucked, we've been drugged,
we've chatted till sunrise with true friends
What else can we ask for?
Tough guys leave their children spread over the
large spaces of Northamerica and Latinamerica
Before facing death
Before receiving with a hopeless face the visit of
the Bony, of the Skully
Before receiving with a face wrinkled by indifference
the visit of the Godmother, of the Sovereign
of the Penguin, the Hairy, the Ugliest in the Party,
the Ugliest and Most Pointed in the Party"
--Roberto Bolaño