Let’s Analyze The Landscape

It’s happened before: between zeros

of temporary light

the chairs remember our conversations.

But traumatic experiences prefer

native languages, to repeat the same idea

to place order where there is chaos

or nothing at all.

Mired in the eloquence of pets,

in doctrines

of fasting, in not feeling piety for what we see

leaving before us, it seems like life

doubts: gnawing keys, residential fears,

poplin skirts that imitate retro rhythms…

there where we go back

the transients overact.

And so what if we were never dissidents, if the old

moral hooks snagged even older

nets

and the price of charity didn’t lead us to the lowly

neighborhoods

but like tourists fallen

from some collective hope, with our eyes

blinded by cheap literature, predisposed to drama?

Convincing poisons give a double dose

of attraction: your inner self turns

and my foot suspects… Here voice corrects

thought:

from nuptial manure words grow.

Our silences are still not innocent,
our mistakes no longer speak of love.

Translated by Curtis Bauer

Let’s Analyze The Landscape is from Un huésped panorámico [A Panoramic Guest] (Barcelona, DVD Ediciones, 2010).

You can read and listen to the poem in the original Spanish here.