The Prelude to the Day

 

I auspicate my day with eulogies

on the sparrow which high up there on the balcony balustrade

voices in its diamantine chirps

my joy of knowing how to live on very little

 

I put on my royal mantle as ex-emperor over the country

of ageless youthfulness

I wait for the water to boil in the tea kettle and meanwhile

I eat the crumbs from the fancy cake

baked in honour of my anniversary fifty years ago

 

I can hear footsteps on the stairs seemingly wending for my door

oh it’s not Her happiness resounds in someone else’s heart

uttered through the perfumed vapours of the lilies bought from the marketplace

 

in the library I’m welcomed by large ontological maps

today I’m going to anchor in a bay where there congragated

stranded ships and the shadows of my deceased friends

concluding my pious recollections

I pass on to my harsh work as a translator

 

I open a weighty and sweat-smudged encyclopaedia

tadpole letters gush out slipping through my fingers

which drift away in the cigarette smoke

 

where are the rare words hiding ?

under the tooth enamel ? in the heart’s iron ?

or in the dung of the lions once looming in my dreams ?

 

now the sparrow is fretting among the cold city wires

 

I put off my royal mantle as ex-emperor

and exchange it for the pots and pans of the gypsy woman on my doorsill

 

at long last the day puts on the sought-after contour

hexagonal and adorned with sumptuous garlands of stinging nettles

 

embrace the poem

 

let the poem wend its way to you

stealthily at the pace of the cat heading

for the bird rejoicing in the grass

 

when it reaches your heart’s gate

embrace the poem unwaveringly

like the flight of the bird that soared away

sensing the approach of the perfidious feline

 

nourish it with the feverishness of your insomnia

fortify it with you anger your joys

and let it leave the way it came

stealthily softly

 

it might come across an open door

it might be the fragrance over a barren life

 

Books

Books of mythological poems

books of poems dedicated to the Renaissance

books of conceptual poems

books of so-called philosophical poems

books of cheerful sylvan poems

books of ballads or odes ornated like the grandson’s

birthday cake

 

everything is wonderful when your belly is filled up

and your sweetheart is waiting for you in her

transparent night gown

 

I subscribe to a book of commonplace poems from which

there burst the odours and the rags of the atomic age

or the bleating of the sheep driven to the slaughterhouse

in a word a book from which

there rises the poet’s cry when his fingers are crushed

in the door hinge

 

please excuse my preferences

and my smoking cheap cigarettes

 

English version by Gabriela PACHIA