The Couple

We revisit to the Edenic couple,

Yet on a distinct, untrodden path, strewn with natural obstacles,

With wild beasts, monsters, and mongrels which bark,

Yapping at us but it’s so considerate of them to yawp and wail,

Since they weave a curtain of protests for us to hide…

Genuine purity blooms, mirrored

In the blood and the bones and the flesh bitten by the hope of life.

Indeed, we revisit to the Edenic couple

And step into it stealthily,

Coalescing into it,

Starting all over again, you eat the apple,

I eat the serpent and whatever may be at hand.

Anyway, some different taste.

 

Purified through venom and honey,

We reiterate the couple’s song from A, from the vocalisations

And it will be immaculate and invigorating, against the background of millennia…

 

The Road

Absorbed in thought, hands clasped behind my back,
I walk on the railroad tracks,
The most strightforward road
Ever.
From behind me, a train races

Hell-for-leather
Utterly ignorant of me.

This train – ancient Zeno bears me witness –
Will never catch up to me,
Since I’ll forever take the lead by a few steps
Over the things which cannot think.

Or, supposing it ran me down
Brutally,
There’ll always be a man around
To walk ahead of it
Absorbed in thought,
Hands clasped behind his back.

Much like myself now
Ahead of the black monster
Which hurtles nearer at a terrifying speed
And which will never catch up to me
Never ever.

 

Don Juan

Once I do well

In a love

I’ve been forging for a long time,

I copy it fair

Onto another woman’s heart.

 

Mother Nature was fairly wise

To create women

Rather than men

So that we are favoured to refine

Our passions,

Writing a great many

Rough drafts.

 

Precautions
I dressed myself up in a suit of armour
Manufactured from the stones that dared
Defy the rushing waters.

I poised a pair of glasses
On the nape of my neck,
With a view to perceive
Things in sound
Hindsight.

I gauntleted and greaved and helmeted
My hands, my legs, my thoughts,
Leaving no part of myself assailable,
Prone to caresses.
Or to further poisons.

To fully shield my heart

I even fabricated a breastplate

From an 800-year-old

Tortoise carapace.

Having everything arranged like this
I tenderly replied to her,
“I love you, too.”

 

The Shadow

 

Should our shadow
Relish all of our five senses as well,
We might delight in a more plenitudinous life,
Both our hearts throbbing at the fullest.
However, a long process of abstraction
Has meddled in lengthwise
Between ourselves and our shadows
And, due to our insensitivity,
Has reached its apogee.

 

Some people
Merely live side by side with their shadows,
As incomplete as shadows might be,
Scantily grasping, a whit of an eye,
A whit of a hand.

English version by Gabriela PACHIA