Material
Shadow of air on grass
Detalle
MORNING ON MY STREETThe morning entered my town
as clean, as round and pure,
as an apple
on a mirror.
Today, my street is open.
Are there angels playing
on the cornices of houses?
She was the first to pass
with her joyful hips:
two crooked parcels of light
rocking on tender black.
The windows, awake,
watched her quietly, happily.
Two blonde girls stop,
one in the sun, another in the shade.
Tender gold of their arms,
soft silver of their shoulders.
Now, a workman passes
with a mirror on top of his head.
He doesn’t know he’s carrying
the sky and a handful of white clouds.
He heads into the distance…
light and shadow
slipping about polished silver.
A shiny, speedy whirlwind…
a boy on a bike.
The street ends far away,
as if it went to the sea.
The boy disappears.
WALK
I suddenly caught the morning
entering the town,
singing by the hand of the thin rain.
With wet, bare feet
it was coming from deep, green ways.
Empty, transparent fingers of wind
on burnished trays.
The scherzo of a clog on the pavement.
Merry song.
And beneath the fresh linen cloth
the workman’s wife carries the twelve peals.
A song that falls and rises.
Dust on the wings and also the sky.
A song as distant and mild
as the shadow of air on grass.
It only reaches me in snatches;
but I understand it exact and whole,
like the shadow of air on grass.
PANTOMIME
Give me, give me that grand, glossy,
night-polished piano…
Here, beneath the pines
and a near sea.
Devoid of misery,
of that despicable poverty,
Pierrot now dead,
do not invite the moon yet.
And Laforgue in sad province,
hanging from a purple pine,
Pulcinella doused in flour;
his naked feet dripping ice,
his socks deceased
(beautiful boxes of cold jewellery).
The judge, the coroner, the clerk,
the scissors of autopsies
with which they then cut myrtles
in enclosed gardens.
Open, open his moonlike suit.
Pull off his starlike buttons…
He has neither chest nor stomach…
Cut off his hands,
with which he used to skip
around the marble pool;
and his feet of luminous ice,
when he danced with Carina Ari.
(The piano – sumptuous – beneath the sky,
and the bassoon with its dark voice
and nutty taste.)
She, naked, white Leda,
the cello between her thighs,
swan strangled by ecstasy…
Now, now
is the time
to invite the moon!
Don’t think it comes
from miserable alleys,
from spilling its flour
on grotty roofs:
it is over the sea
among purple pines.
Let us begin our concert:
the sand phosphoresces
and the sea keeps silence.
Dance, dance, dance.
Turn, turn, turn.
Jet, torn camellias.
The green pool in the night,
Laforgue and his provincial moon.
Dance, dance, Carina Ari,
dead perhaps up in the North.
GALICIA
Caravel of frost.
Oh, the deaf rigging of sleep
and the green castaways on their feet
– their hands pressed against livid temples,
when the grottoes open
(the grottoes that await treasures,
and those that were made
for the feet of someone divine and deceased).
Since no poet was able to support the weight
of your clamour on their back,
for the first time
I am the one to strum this deaf rigging.
Frozen caravel,
ghost:
I have your treasures,
your grottoes,
your dead.
The north wind’s drone,
the chanter in the sweet valley
of a bagpipe of hard stone.
Oh, Galicia, motionless,
distant, wrapped in thought,
dreaming in front of a stone clock
that a weakened sun moves.
Your gruff women
always waiting
in front of a tenebrous sea.
And on the cliff of their hard chins
the sweetest eyes scream.
It is raining, raining on the forests
where our mystery comes from
– white horses bearing mist
on their nacreous spines.
It is raining, raining on the forests,
on evil, on soft grass.
And a green sleep envelops us.
Invisible bells ring,
and She always on the doorstep
like a shadow doll.
Bastabales, Compostela…
Sonorous mountain of sculpted stone.
I am the poet who has been chosen
to whip, to chase away
the mysterious shadow horses.
They will pass quickly in the night
along deep roads,
along the rivers and bridges of Rome.
Oh, my deceased,
my dead woman.
Oh, my great beloved!
TO ROSALÍA
There is no need to cry anymore.
She has cried for everybody, once and for all.
Let us be quiet…
I see you like this:
ribbons on stars,
open eyes of dead children fixed on ancestral rooms.
Let us be quiet…
In the corners altars of silence have been lit;
rain of serge flowers in sad passageways.
With your twisted mouth you summon the dead
and shipwrecked from the steps,
amid the mist, in infinite evening.
Cemetery apron and bells between sea and mist;
black ship dead on the road;
yellow, contorted cheeks;
unopened balcony full of birds and dry leaves;
breasts squeezed down to the last drop of light;
hands between myrtle and moon, beneath the pool’s green water.
What are you doing in the evening that’s always fading
or in the night that will never end?
Without body, without suit, without roar,
crown of shadows, music of pianos in mourning…
(It’s raining on the steps and roses of the manor.)
WINTER
You will drop your rich clothes
on this wretched floor.
We are in the humblest house.
Through the only window
we contemplate the rags
of this happy day.
To our delight
the rain erases
the white, the luminous
horses of summer.
Don’t go thinking
there’s a shiny jewel
on this beggarly sky.
We are surrounded
by a wretched nature.
We foresaw this landscape
once before.
We came here
for a rare pleasure.
And a strange happiness
surrounds us now.
This is winter,
a small winter
for us alone.
The door is locked.
The house is wrapped
in a silent downpour.
Only from a solitary tree
has a bird,
like a ball of shadow,
descended on the ragged afternoon.
In the poor corners
of this miserable room
your rich clothes will shine.
Illuminate this wretched,
joyful day
with your bosom,
with your thighs
polished by happy solitude!
SUNDAY
I remember you now,
poor Laforgue.
You left
with your provincial moon.
The tiredness
of faces and forms…
Deep boredom!
Come with your different
arms,
your eyes from where
the wind is born.
Today in my town
even the dead are known to me.
Deep boredom!
Come, come, please,
unrepeated beauty.
NOCTURNAL
You would tell me now
about the voiceless, naked roses in the night
– you, the pretty friend
of finickity poems –
because I am inside
a massive tower,
walled up by shadows.
I know I’m in the garden,
and next to the house,
diluted in dark air.
You would come like that Jean Börlin,
with his tight suit of black velvet,
or naked like a golden reed.
You, capable of driving away the shadows
and cutting the roses in the night,
bearer in your sad hands
of a glistening silver bird.
What else could you want,
oh, my pretty, finickity friend?
The night, the roses, the beautiful pool,
and she dead in her chamber.
She, with her hair in silence,
inside her hard silk suit.
You would dress her in
cold rings, warm socks,
because her naked feet still have light.
Cover her in ebony roses,
because that is what the night is.
Oh, my pretty friend,
make that glistening silver bird
sing in your sad hands!
NOCTURNAL
Clear night,
piano among magnolias,
myrtle or oboe voice.
The light of her breasts
hesitant in the green.
Neither shadows nor mysteries,
neither stars nor moon.
Clear night,
deep night.
Dance, dance…
Illuminate, dazzle
the atmosphere with your arms.
Luminous ivory
of your hips,
dance among the trees.
Your thighs still green,
cold and hard.
The night still has
a jet chord,
a fountain’s sleep.
The dawn
wishes to cut your hands.
It’ll be here soon,
dead silver bird.
SONG OF THE THREE SPOONS
for when Mª Luisa has her child
Tac-tac-tac
wooden spoon
rough-hewn bowl
my child
is on the hearth.
Tin-tin-tin
silver spoon
ancestral bowl
my child
is in the lap.
Ton-ton-ton
gold spoon
crystal bowl
my child
is a royal prince.
FIRST COMMUNION
for Puriño de Cora
Clean, white,
unsullied morning.
Even the rooftops
are in a festive mood
You bring the whole altar
with you
(caravel of lights!)
Little sailor of the sky,
you don’t know
and a wreath of irises
enfolds your forehead.
As you pass today
arches of lilies
rise up.
You brought the whole altar
with you.
Caravel of foam!
The temple remained
closed,
and in the shadows the paten
full of a divine silence.
THE NAME
That is what the verse, my verse,
that of the chosen poets, is for.
To give eternity to things.
Herein lies, then,
its true birth.
Oh, the anguish of baptizing you,
waiting for the right word
to appear!
Followed by the pain,
that ardent pleasure
of making the waiting time eternal.
It will come without its name,
naked, through the silence.
Oh, the anguish of baptizing you,
the glorious miracle of finding your name!
Because there are words that lived
only a moment
(the font, in the shade,
the luminous altar,
the invested poet),
there are also dead words
and others that live alone.
And words that throb
in the blood of a priest’s fingers.
And words to close the eyes of the dying.
And light words
that are carried by the wind.
You can live…
The name that like a blanket
will cover your body awaits you.
It will get in your blood,
it will get in your life,
in your gestures and your hours.
It will watch over your sleep.
You will have the same fragrance as your name,
which, in silence,
will always be making you,
and will be the only part of you
you take from this world.
NOCTURNAL
(Praza do Campo)
Darkness on the lookout.
Houses on crutches
come up the street.
Knives of moon
on the pavement.
A single window
yellow with insomnia.
Moon-hardened, the pebble
desires and awaits the crime.
The fountain’s green, dark-skinned water
disappears.
Did night leave from here?
With raised finger
the stone saint
imposes silence.
WALKS
I am alone,
almost alone.
I contemplate a tender sky
like thin blue wool.
The river is so still
it looks solid,
and underneath this block
as of crystalline syrup
the stones shine
and make me happy.
The poplars, always so tremulous,
have fallen asleep
in the afternoon.
It is Sunday…
seemingly everything,
even the birds,
have fled to town.
The old mill
is stuck in the river,
so quiet
even its silence
is copied in it.
But now…
along a track
on the other side of the river
there goes a village burial.
(Who could die
on such a sweet afternoon!)
I see – because I am a poet –
that inside the coffin
he is in his Sunday best:
white shirt, black suit,
glossy tie
and new shoes.
His nails still bear this earth of his,
and his deformed fingers
sluggishly intersect
on his chest.
His eyes gaze up
at the tender sky.
But his little house remains
closed, still, silent.
There is a mysterious solitude
about it
that the river copies.
Alone, at a slow pace,
I head back to town.
ADVICE
Step now on the bagpipe.
As with a lung
there would always be
a drop of blood or air left.
It deserves to be
exhausted for a while.
I long for a mute Galicia.
We are all shouting.
Let us burn our rags
in Compostela.
I know full well there’s a mystery
in our Land:
beyond the mist,
beyond the sea,
beyond the forest.
I am still distracted,
a tender night surrounds me.
But I am always on the lookout
for a miracle, a voice.
Nobody can take my solitude
away from me.
LANDSCAPE WITHOUT HISTORY
It was a new air,
untainted by lungs.
A new sea,
untainted by shipwrecks.
Roses that hadn’t been worn yet.
Wind without wings.
Light without feathers.
Track without ruts.
Death hadn’t been born yet.
Mirror without memories.
What great sadness in the sum of things!
When will the hand of man arrive?
INCOMPLETE PRAYER
We contemplate the rain from the threshold.
Time isn’t counted: it is in sound.
Everything of insignificance provided something for this transit.
After the rain the landscape covered its ears.
There are no efforts of roses, noises of lights.
It’s the triumph of small things.
The afternoon is everything, but without struggles;
it walks barefoot in the rain.
It isn’t in a hurry: it lost its hourglass.
The sea, the sky, were beaten
by this humble, silent rain.
We contemplate this small,
eternal spectacle from the doorway.
And then…
MY REFUGE
How often have I trembled with fear,
thinking the doors of my refuge might close!
Only a beggar fits inside.
I go there with my poor burden
of refuse, rubbish…
the kind of things one collects every day.
Time passes.
And that sad, dark heap
– oh, miracle, Lord! –
turns into a glistening
treasure of precious stones.
How much I still have to thank you for.
My poetry, my kingdom, my refuge…
And again trembling with fear,
thinking the doors might close.
I NEVER FIND YOU
Another day that fades
without a struggle in the city.
I never find you!
I lifted heavy stones.
In hands that trembled
with fear and disgust
I held warm birds and cold spiders.
I listened to my heart
in the grove and at sea.
I got up early
to watch that burial
passing at the break of day.
I never find you!
On a bright, sunny morning
I saw the mother
lift that mote of gold dust,
ivory or mother-of-pearl,
on the wind of her hair.
And I saw the light
on her breasts
sing of the glory of the day.
I never find you!
I looked into the beloved’s eyes.
Why are her gardens empty?
Ardently I seek you
on this day that fades lazily in the city.
SUNSETS IN MY TOWN
Sunsets in my town,
long, almost eternal.
(The years pass quickly,
the days slowly.)
Light slides
across my glossy piano.
What music shall we give it?
The hands dream.
Sunset of silver
on ebony.
I think of dead poets.
Calm, calm…
Motionless, eternal afternoon.
We sink into sweetness
– with what solitude, how far?
Sky, sky, or rather light.
Balance of this
tender grey.
No, there is no landscape,
no flesh or blood.
Sunsets in my town,
long, slow, music.
The hands, they dream.
AGAIN…
On these cold walls
I’m looking for a nail
on which to hang my solitude.
Again and again, terror!
In a corner
where I used to have my altar,
now broken words,
linguistic rubble.
Will there be no more
words for my verses?
Desolate – the room
of my banners.
Not even an echo of air
in their folds.
Have I lost my kingdom?
I am surrounded by silence
as when we close
a holy book.
Again and again, terror!
Who unmade the bed
where I used to tuck in
the words of my verses?
My God, I won’t be a poet anymore!
LAST PRAYER
Lord:
I’m not asking you to walk
on water.
I’ve come to sit beside you.
My arms are over there
on the sand.
Let the sea
keep an eye on them…
I’m tired!
I’m asking you
to close
the golden gates of distance
where my verses came from.
That glistening bird
made my brow weary.
Let it be no more
than a shadow on the sea.
I’m tired!
Let irises of sleep
fall
on my eyelids.
Don’t ask me any questions:
you’ll only
make me start again.
As when the viaticum
passes along a street,
this is the silence I want now,
the solitary silence
that was taken from the Sanctuary
and is sometimes
empty and closed.
The sea is still,
and on the sand
my modest arms
are swallowed up.
I don’t want to dream
of mysterious distances.
Remove that glistening bird far from me!
How fresh my forehead feels
leaning on your cloak!
Lord, Lord,
close my book for ever!