Heath Wing

Nighthawks

 

The origin of all things…when was it?

It must have been that night. Night is the great machine.

Now it’s time to invent a soul for them, a word,
now one must make a pact of motherhood.
Or maybe it’s the other way around: maybe each word

is a search for the thing that names.

 

Juan Andrés García Román,
The Splintered Match (DVD, 2008)

 

We are against a wall here but I have to tell you if the night is on full blast with its air of

Italian wine and its late nights you and I you ask aloud you and I you ask you ask perhaps if

there can be a

 

you

 

if there can be an

 

I.

 

We are here looking at each other’s belly buttons einander  looking at our nocturnal selves

looking at our nervous selves and I would like to ask you yes it’s ok if you spend the night

with me but to ask you

 

to ask you

 

to wake up

 

for tomorrow

 

tomorrow

 

is yours

and not only the inconclusive windmills of the night.

 

You can call me whatever you want you have my permission but

 

you

 

wake up

 

tomorrow is too clear

 

and my retinas are sensitive are too sensitive in the dark and your eyes are footsteps of owls

and they have squirrel feet the word

 

the word

 

you can change my name

 

common nouns

 

to call me squirrel

 

or moth

 

or deserver of light

 

or suicidal butterfly

 

you can call me

 

animal or waist

 

but

 

 

wake up wherever you are

 

wake up

 

the light is not only yours

 

wake up this time.

 


Translated by Heath Wing

 

“Nighthawks” is from the book Epidermia, (El Gaviero Ediciones, 2011).

 

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