Un piloto irlandés prevé su muerte. (Versión de este blog)

"Sé que deberé enfrentar mi muerte,
en algún lugar arriba entre las nubes;
a quienes combato yo no odio,
ni amo yo a quienes protejo;
mi tierra es Kiltartan Cross,
la gente de Kiltartan es la mía,
ningún final probable puede hacerles mal,
o dejarlos más felices que antedía.
Ninguna ley o deber me hizo luchar,
ni hombres de lo público ni multitudes,
un solitario impulso de deleite
me trajo a este tumulto entre las nubes;
sopesé todo, todo traje a la mente,
desperdicio de aliento el porvenir
y desperdicio de aliento mi pasado,
de acuerdo a esta vida, esta muerte."
--William B. Yeats.

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

The black Heralds

"There are blows in life, so strong... I don´t know.
Blows like from God´s hatred; like if before them
the hangover of everything we´ve lived, layed upon our soul... I don´t know.

They are few; but are... they open dark trenches
on the fiercest face and the strongest back.
They could be the colts of barbaric atilas;
or the black heralds that death send us.

They are the deep falls of soul´s Christ,
of some precious faith that luck blasphemes.
Those bloody blows are the crepitations
of a bread at the very gate of the oven, that is burning.

And Man... poor... poor! He turns his eyes, like
when over our shoulder a clap call us;
he turns his crazy eyes, and everything he´s lived
lays, like a pool of guilt, over his look.

There are blows in life, so strong... I don´t know."
--César Vallejo, The black heralds (Los heraldos negros)

César Vallejo

 In deed, there are some blows in life... so strong, so powerful, so terrible.

Pain is a common color in a poet's palette.

But so is white in any painter's.

You give a white paint bucket to a child, and he will make a mess with it.

Then, give Vallejo some black paint, some disease, some rupture, some struggle, any kind of suffering...

And read: let amazement take ya´. So suddently realize you were unaware of how many shades of black could dwell together, in a single piece of writting.

Cheers, my reader

La planicie, por Jean/Hans Arp, versión en español.

"La Planicie

Estaba sólo junto a una silla en la planicie
que se perdía en un horizonte vacío.

La planicie estaba impecablemente pavimentada.
Nada, nada en lo absoluto salvo la silla y yo
había en ella.

El cielo estaba siempre azul,
ningún sol le daba vida.

Una inescrutable, insensible luz
iluminaba la planicie infinita.

Pero este día eterno parecía proyectado --
artificialmente-- desde una esfera diferente.

Nunca me daba sueño o hambre o sed
jamás calor o frío.

El tiempo era sólo un fantasma incomprensible
pues nada sucedía o cambiaba.

En mí el Tiempo aún vivía un poco
gracias, sobretodo, a la silla.

Debido a mi ocupación con ella
nunca perdí del todo
la noción del pasado.

Desde entonces me ensillé a mí mismo, como si fuera un caballo, a la silla
y troté por el lugar con ella,
algunas veces en círculos,
otras en línea recta.

Asumo que lo he conseguido.

Si en verdad lo hice no lo sé,
pues no había nada en el espacio
para verificar mis movimientos.

Sentándome en la silla medité tristemente, pero sin desespero,
sobre por qué el núcleo del mundo rezuma una luz tan negra"
--Jean/Hans Arp