The world gives you itself in fragments / in splinters:
in 1 melancholy face you glimpse 1 brushtroke by Dürer
in someone happy the grimace of 1 amateur clown
in 1 tree: the trembling of birds sucking from its crook
in 1 flaming summer you catch bits of the universe licking its face
the moment 1 indescribable girl
rips her Oaxacan blouse
just at the crescent of sweat from her armpits
& beyond the rind is the pulp / & like 1 strange gift of the eye
the lash
Maybe not even Carbon 14 will be able to reconstruct the true facts
The days are gone when 1 naturalist painter
could ruminate over the excesses of lunch
between movements of Swedish gymnastics
& without losing sight of the rose-blue tones of flowers he wouldn’t have imagined
even in his sweetest nightmares
We are actors of infinite acts
& not exactly under the blue tongue
of movie spotlights
for example now / that you see how Antonioni passes by
with his usual little camera
observed b those who prefer to bury their heads in the grass
to get drunk on smog or whatever / so as not to add
to the scandals
that already make the public roads impassable
by those who were born to be lavishly kissed by the sun
& its earthly ambassadors
by those who talk of fabulous copulations / of females you can’t believe
in this geological age
of virbations that would make you 1 fervent propagandist for Zen Buddhism
by those who at 1 point were saved
from the accidents the crime rags call substantial
& that by the way––for now–-aren’t counted among the flowers of the Absurd
That’s how it is on the trapeze on the tightrope
of this 1,000-ring circus
1 old man rattles on about the thrill he felt at seeing Gagarin
fluttering like 1 fly in outer space
& pity the starship wasn’t called Icarus 1
that Russia is so fiercely anti-Trotskyite
& then his voice dissolves / collapses
between cheers & boos
Reality & Desire get thrashed / get chopped up
they spill out over each other
like they never would in 1 of Cernuda’s poems
foam runs from the mouth of the 1 who speaks wonders
& it would seem he lived in the clouds
& not on the outskirts of this barrio