Lived As If it Really Happened

You are right:
what is best is always absent
and life must be lived as if it really happened
without exhausting oneself so much
with some joy if possible

You know well
that where I have not been I could have been happy.
A man spends too much time in the same place
being alone, constantly alone.
But for that there are afternoons, my friend
to walk in solitude without being seen or under the sun
and think about certain places and women we never knew.


Now That All Has Come to Pass

Arriving in a new city and living alone
when you have walked other streets
and loved the people of Europe.
Arriving in a strange city,
braving the brazen glances of youth.
Enduring nights alone with neither God nor family,
as a man removed from the world he observes
and, in spite of his cries, is not heard.
With no body bare and blooming between the sheets
Living in shadows with a useless secret
And one day when it is too late,
thinking of the books you have not written
on trips and on idle afternoons.
Living alone exhausting memories:
The naked streets that lead to the familiar house
The beaches from where in front of the sea
I wrote: “Tomorrow I will live alone
and what has passed will have been like finding happiness.”
Now I have gone forever,
far from the harsh herd and their futile positions.
Now I live alone and wait
But one day everything will have come to pass
and courage will no longer be required.
In silence closing your eyes and without fear
saying: “I came to this world pursuing a phantom.”
“Men are fools and do not know how to love.”
And disappearing as the last train of the night
leaving only its smoke suspended in the air.
And all will have come to pass in a strange city
far from the sea and the friends no one knows.


In Silence We Bear the Heaviest of Burdens

In silence we bear the heaviest of burdens,
a weight it seems was altogether forgotten.
The voice that swelled and swiftly fell mute within us
is stirred from a profound sleep, drawing
its purest breath of being in consummate silence.
That which we are, we are denied,
and truth is obscured by the words we assign it.
The persistence of God, death,
everything marked by greatness
implores man to fulfill its purpose.
But how far from us fate occurs
We grow very quiet to listen for the end,
for in silence the earth reveals its abundance.
But how difficult this knowledge is
And no man readily directs his spirit toward what is desperate.
Days among men are difficult
Those who surrender to silence are better off,
conceived in the pure acts of sacrifice, vowing solitude,
suspended between bliss and misfortune.
Those men born to burn for this struggle cannot be helped,
and find the fullness of their lives articulated only by silence.


The Golden Coins of Twilight

Because life is victorious despite death’s mark upon it
Because there is too much cultivated land
lying in wait for an eternal spring
Because no one knows what the birds or lovers
are waiting for, sleeping at this hour
in cheap hotels near the highway
And far from them-among the old hills
and in houses scattered between mountains-
other lovers, not so different from them,
contemplate tomorrow more slowly and with less hope
because they know that the dead inhabit forests,
and at one time were young, blind, and dangerous.
But they no longer consider the stars
nor the golden coins of twilight.

Life triumphs without effort, this is certain,
like a long dawning with no need for gods
forgetting also the sacrifices of those who
were initiated in the silence that precedes all mystery.
Time confounds blood with the soiled sands of cemeteries.
All gifts are mislaid
and all return to be, time and again, reclaimed.
This is the sun that burns beyond the cities
The one reserved on rainy days
when the sky is azure and opaque alike
But the cities do not cease and people leave their houses
and Sundays are merely vague moments
for the silence that finds us alone
and asks us about the children we never had
about the things we obscure that now pursue us
about that which meant something more than our lives
a splendid hour that appeared upon touching us
like a golden coin in the dawn.


We Never Triumph in Spite of Innocence

For those who have recovered,
and life has been like a long disease
they are in the world like others, the different ones
those who witness victory without astonishment
to recover is not to triumph.

Where we, the victorious ones, believed ourselves winners
there death prevails
well, nothing gives us as much enthusiasm as forgetting.

Those who have survived know only this:
they have survived and, now, may only hope for the worst.
For that which sickened them before
is transformed and awaits death
yielding that knowledge of the end
without pause, without recognizing all they fought.
For the arduous and the understood
are only forms of initiation into purity
when in life and in the world
you are lacking these things.
But, those who have recovered know
the futility of preparation.

We aspire to die bravely
but, we never triumph with innocence
Death always defeats the purity that equals it.


The Divine Is Merely a Word

Possessing solely
the stuttering of a word we consider sacred
without knowing how it is illuminated
returning to that which was one time celebrated
and finally intending to know it.

To have burned with a vague desire
feeling, at times, a strange victory.
to defeat without knowing what we have defeated
and to call that living
A seed scarcely touched by a miracle
An anonymous place where desperation
is a blind well whose waters death drinks.

To possess merely this novel utterance
Its exact writing in one page
That will never be ours.
In that we imagine we have triumphed
And now may completely abandon ourselves
to the outburst of one word written with precision
But no one triumphs in front of silence
Nonetheless, to endure forgetting this discovery
Indicated by what is absent, this tremor
whose signals are the only language we can speak.







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