sábado, 10 de septiembre de 2011

The Gold of the Ruins: traducción H. Klein




The Gold of the Ruins
Alexis Naranjo



translated by Henry Klein



I
Figurations


The Cross of Exile

My staff has the seven eyes
that shine on the cross of exile
when a fallow deer raises its outline
in the forests of my hearing.

And after gathering the final sheaf
a thousand smells become visible at once:
from Daedalus is the twine
I thread in that mirror.

For the sounds harvested like silver
apples aren't enough for me:
after ripening in an oboe
the rain comes of their symbols.

And my every hazard's to garner that light
so that my arrow hits the mark:
thus my shadows no longer flee
when the moon's born again.

See then the unruly sign
that illuminates my life:
seven are the eyes that shine on my staff
when I raise up the cross of exile.


Quicksilver of the Possessed

I may not hang myself with that rope
if my rites and practices are tugged at
but the alluvium of my precepts
will adorn the travellers
with a crown of fathomless depths.

I tell you that rope's for
climbing the heights as a sign of my good faith
although the dreamers seethe below
in the cascade of my claret.

And no more limpid honeycomb
or deliquescence of mysteries.
What fury there sleeps
in a warrior's guitar!

I tell you the flowering of my delirium
are ten tritons kissing your lips.
They'll give you your fiery opiate
in the chalice of the moon.

So it is that watching my mask
I see to the depth of your mirrors.
Who doesn't deny me
will drink of my blood
in the fiestas of the other life.

And if you make these sounds your own
that bear so much that's senseless
then what your heart longs for
will lavish the fragrance of my lotuses.

And I tell you should you fail to hide your hands
at the hour when the daemons
lay down the cross of all that's been lived through
your vices so finely fashioned
will dance in my ensuing furnace.

So here's
the question that I ask.
If in your archangel's niche
you're both creator and the shade
what'll it be like ... the fiesta you attend
with your desires already sated?


Dead of Night

And how should that daydream not bring me
this whirling of girls offering themselves
like bounteous shadows
when I recover from the earth
the silkiest light of the dead?

  But see now what a friend can offer

the soundness of this misery
the warrant to receive my spectre
the impulse to elevate the ultimate unknown.

  Stormy moon
who at dead of night fathoms your sovereign source
keeps raking up past certainties
that demand just one more vibrant body
crystal of greater madness
opacity newly insane.

Yet in the innermost abode
my mind outdoes that light
those certainties that dazzle.


Figurations

The one who goes around dreaming me
listless progression of keen-edged manuscripts
his paintbrushes ripping apart
murmurings and tenderness and evil...

The one who slips on an enigmatic tongue
where osseous days are broken
and nonetheless walks afflicted
gathering armatures and clocks
to climb up to the death that awaits him...

The one who goes through verdure
where fin-de-siècle laureates dabble
and yet straying through alien tunnels
loses his shadow among enemies
that parade through his head inflating dolls
for the smiling maids of honour...

The one whose iron vitals regale him
with orphic flowers for a leap beyond all bounds
AND WHAT A LEAP
fifty betrayals of the numinous
and some larvae devouring
an enormous scroll of habits...

The one who hangs his suit in an invisible closet
thinking thus to exorcise his angst
and that feeling of rejection
while his eyes sharpen on the festivities below
and a bell rings loudly from incredible heights...

The one whose thirsting heart
antique spout that sips his rigid nerves
and the bitterness of his blood...

That creator bereft of wholesome magnitude
hermit and his troubadours festering
in the pith of falsehood
the goldfinch that pecks at them
and the murmuring of supplicating beasts...

That nullity   that cipher
venting his fury on undreamed-of entrails
to live at last
dancing his nonbeing
in the seething fervor of a hiding place...


Recovered from the distance...

and hopelessly pure
like the inner curve of restraint
they're what's happy on just one leg
the ear's perception in its needling forest
the stampede of immovable remorse.

In their azure they're both the decoy and the leech
uncertain calm
a whirling in the nest of what's inverse
the deadly glamour of snakes and apples.

And when looked for they themselves impart their riddle
that lechery in which they disaffect
needful as they are of other shadows
more inert and more caressing.

Them! Love in a hot flush of tatoos!

But turning round they endure among wreckage
and their nerves drink in what quavers
the bitterness of lonely nights
the silence of defeated marriage beds.


Temptation of the Sphere

A succubus
has brought its gift for my solipsistic pirouette
in this declining zenith
and clamorous its jaws close
on black and roaring flames.

But with twice its strength
I feel like drinking that fire
and among dancers taking communion
guide its dromedaries to my desert.

Blind impulse eager for life
to have to force this void
right up to the gaping maw of mystery
and that the succubus offer me
a custom-made shroud.

Sadness to those that live within the Sphere
in what's glutted by rapacious limits
the heart of the succubus no longer tempts them
and yet they heed no warning
sheltered as they are
in the tomb of Sameness.


Tempest

It's the taste of invincible dogmas
though I reach out my hands though I draw in my death.

Just leave me this crackling fever
this subjugated shadow
the infinite heaviness of the atom of my soul.

For it's the taste of invincible dogmas
raising itself up outside
like the climbing of a paternal ragbag
like the eye looked at by a hundred suspicious mothers.

And it's the taste of invincible dogmas
swelling up in time with panic
when whistling's the only smokescreen possible
and in our skin dreams ulcerate
and acid runs from life to life
in the inane progression of calendars.

So flee from the ancestral albumin
and sustain yourself in pliancy fed
by the taste of invincible dogmas.

Invincible dogmas ... a priest told me once
"Yes, I like them, you can see they come from somewhere else"
and examined my heretical fount
appending snakes to his sentence.

But here you are (I told myself) husk of the minute-hand
my dogmas suck bodies dry
sinking sedulous thorns
into the heart of all distress.

And there's no end
as it's the taste of invincible dogmas
hauling me into the tempest
of burned and blackened gods.

You tombstones of hardened silence
my dogmas hew out an Oedipus
crowned with gnarled entwining beasts.


The Third Death

If we enter backwards or crossing ourselves
only the gash of hell.
Not the honour of the void fondling our nape
but the flow of the body out of the body
while we await the dusk
like nomadic statuary   in chasms   bewitched.

If we enter backwards or crossing ourselves only
the gash of hell.
Not the honour of the void rehearsing its refinements
with gloves and periwigs
but a pair of glasslike hands powdering our face.
What swathes us then
is gunpowder asleep
and octopuses that gasp for breath and gulp celestial crowns.
Our breathing racks us
while we deform our hands
with the currency of love and its raging bonds
spilling the salt of clandestine beds
and in that viscera fingering what rustles like dry stormclouds.
Stricken with apathy   hurt beneath our masks
deliverance there isn't the body
fleeing the body
nor the prayer repeated until it rusts
nor amulets against the terrors of the night.

If we enter backwards or crossing ourselves
the gash of hell.
Not the grave or its ineffable embrace
but the placenta of scorpions
a winding sheet of poisonous delusion.
And how far then from the desert
whose mirages beguile us!
For now no witchcraft can distort response
neither opiate nor anodyne
in the warlock's offertory.

On entering backwards or crossing ourselves
we are
the kiss of a huge burning bottle
the headless queen in a kangaroo's pouch
the blowfly and the drone excreting on a royal coronet
the bull and bullfighter copulating honiedly.

On entering backwards or crossing ourselves
we only arrive
at the gash of hell.


Intermezzo

And you, spirit that repudiates the pleasures of the flesh,
whose snare demands my most rapacious cupping glass:
what's in it for you?
Your grizzles world is what
I pierce and tap trailing these heavy gyves, my only
legacy among mankind.
What's in it for you?

You only want to live,
to live on the sustaining cross and dark exalted things.
Since what is yours but mist? – yes,
a mist in search of beings
that rage in the ear of implacable prophets.
Thus your wonder when those beings loom,
overturning your demented cups
and snarling you in a rush of scalding tears.
And this because the prophets have come to revile
their loveliness and poise,
have sounded clarions of triumph
and then stumbled in a swaying isolation.
But you, spirit, overlooking them,
have worsened a wound:
timidity and mammon
stirred in your choked, unruly blood.
So I haven’t quite managed to shun the surmise
that you were going to throw salt on the fire;
I’ve trodden on your belt in all bad faith,
giving myself airs oratorial emboldened
by stormy delusions.
But the wound which you worsened
has taken revenge, girding me with its taint;
a huge Z has bitten my flesh
designing to steal what was longed for of mine,
a huge Z in whose mouth larvae of yours
have eaten unspeakable shame.
And this because you threw mist on my hurt
and I saw that from under my chair
you plundered the spoils with the live sustenance.

Then you hurled ever more mist
while over and again a prophet bit my hands
and from behind my face deformed by slow torture
there flowered this earthy, dry craving
in pursuit of your treachery.

But I’ve incited those beings in vain
for even the neighbourhood dogs
have refused to calm down with the sum of my spoils,
the sustaining cross,
those things most dark and divine.


II
Other temptations


Corps Noh

Her back wants to be looked at
the shadow that awakens.
In the brotherhood of witnesses
she uncovers her back, not the cutlass that bleeds
but her desire for the forbidding father.
But the taboo moves down her thighs
speaks retiringly
and then wanders up her skin, impure messenger
only unfurling does it challenge the body it has dreamt.

But she wants to go within
to founder in another fire
while the witnesses seek her breathing and her mystery.
Thus she consoles herself feigning innocent gestures
vapours with phallic outline
and the cutlass in the most blissful prolongation of a sigh.

Indifferent to the lighted half of her body
she inebriates her responses
her unendingly smooth skin
that red-hot coal between her thighs.
And so she opens herself to the forbidding father and isolates
and delights in him and with appetite now sated
she bites herself like a small gorged beast
her blood on the cutlass.

Such her habits
a two-handed blow to the brotherhood of witnesses
and our inflamed desire.

But her hair hanging loosely she falls asleep again
indifferent to the shadow that surrenders.


Pas de Dieux

They've been given back like blazing pebbles
like butterflies in a surge of glimmering waves.
And they can be heard in a gambler's secrets
and guessed at like a double pythoness. They can
be and perhaps they will. For they can
bring me the custom of undressing the hours behind
the whisperings and insist between violin and viola
on that silence where God peeps and pries
retreating sinuously eternal voyeur
with His phallus so fresh and fervid and fragrant.
But they can also give Him back
His Eden and His sceptre
obsessed as they are by the feast in which Belial
will possess them
on His Holy Table.


Necromancy

Overflowing, self-possessed in my nothingness,
I kindle this whim
and raise it up in veneration.
From my cigar, slow
garlands that unfurl besiege my body
and school it in the halo of what's godless.

And, whimsically, I fondle the necromantic's bed:
altar that celebrates his breathy tang.
But when he awakens,
he'll gather the frost of my artifice
spilling resistance from under my sex.
From moon to moon, together we'll wander
redeeming the light of my odalisque at rest.

And then, puerile old pervert,
with flickering touch like coins newly minted
that dance on the odalisque and shift
my most secret desires,
safe from death
(safe from love!),
I'll reshape my longing and leave
languorous qualms in an epicure's turban.

So we'll unfurl the mirrors
and sink our teeth in.
What an abundance of dates on the table!
Let's help ourselves then to
the sable undress of our fire.


Emblem

Unctuous death you whisper
and it's your magic in the gilded night
and the devious kiss of your vivid pageant.
Desirous maiden, endlessly young
you cry out though you fail to scorn - speak -
odalisque of the pearly moistened tongue.

Lust and sin in your bosom are
raptures that absolve
odalisque who embraces me and
says
reach out your hand, unclothe me, and exult.

Nubile odalisque
in you the Word is copular
but divine.

Speak - sovereign lover
odalisque of the pearly moistened tongue.


By the Estuary

So to await you
waylay your footsteps
think of something else
impure metal or dented stone
my hand advancing between the hours
holding back their torrent
hollow my heart   smoky mirror
for a fire condemned just to wait.

So to remake you
latch your shadow to the moon's curved rim
your silhouette of shining days
the trace of that which   rescuing you
lost itself in the rain
nymph of the estuary
light and wayward amid so much distance
enigmatic as an ochre dream.

So to dream you beyond all dreams
enclose you in the stillness of an instant
with the seas and the years all around
with the topaz of your eyes
and your image of finespun silk
and your seaward lantern
and your frostbitten star.

So to forget you
release your shadow
the lure of my wound
the mirror of my pride
the echo of my error
the provocation
of your reserve.


III
Speculum


Emanation

And one remains after all
pliant block of so much nothingness
empty blather
no end of hills without any space
not even a gust
that isn't your own fire
made hoarse
and hardened

and wavering lines remain
stitched into the selfsame wind
the selfsame angst
the selfsame scaffold

 drunk with life
insatiable Tantalus
hermaphrodite Limit
dishonoured Numen
  all my blind ones
  my scars.


Cleansing

To give myself to this decree
without my frenzied rapture ebbing
or death's sanction of my fate
striking in the depth of every casket
to be like this   strange and similar
blustery coupling of bizarre misunderstandings.

One void and another and may the sky perfect its revenge
redundant wretch   unanchored
loathing in my own detritus.

Let me not cease to build my shattered monument
headland of memory
murderer's dream amid kingdoms coined in the dregs
  in the depth of a crevasse.

One hammer blow and another on my forsaken tomb
and let the sky not hide its baleful face
in a monstrous mask of glory.


Sacrament

It's this shrieking in the mouth of my guts
this endless flying
this attrition amid heaped-up masses of cloud.

And it's the necrotic hoarse crepitations of the underworld
laughter that explodes like a wound in my face
and my braying like a blood-stained flower
  though I crumple
among androids that contract
to give birth to my doubles   my savage shadows.

For I come staggering blow by blow
to hang from a thread   my life transfixed
with my darling in genuflection giving birth
  to the powers of death.

And it's the crucifix of my phallus
and that sun   ghostly food in
my eyes   light of the tunnel
  where I watch
as life ferments and is excreted
     in the molten matter
          of pernicious sores.


Face

It's my mental fractures
and this chewing of images
and the corroded ovarian depth
where I'm crushed by
the lovely sorrow of an impulse.

And it's that very impulse that burns my nerves
this circle of sunbeams
this abundance of a life already wasted.

But it's between shrieks and whining
where there drools
                   the genital slaver of my gallows.


Speculum I

Gory chasms they are of this my female soul
a pit where I live and chew confessions
a fire which I inhabit like the dark one
spitting oaths   drunk with disgrace.

  And this gnashing sound is mine
mine the hands of the murderer when they absolve
the sacrilege of my death.

Triumphant paradigms ... my spectre is thirsty.

  For if beneath my shadow you weave resplendent plots
the aftermath of love
  I cling to this abyss
to the frenzy of the bodies I've profaned
to this foetor of maternal entrails.

  Triumphant paradigms
my spectre doesn't scoff
here where the sky subsides
and scaffolds are raised
and the most fecund tortures are lavished.

From within   from the deep fecundity
  I gather these fruits
a panoply of pontiffs and proclamations
cartilage and whips
warriors and sentries.
  They're my female retinue
the scarifications of my envoy.
And it's the same radiance that yesteryear upheld kingdoms
and the illusion of their unhappy prodigies.

  But hallowed by the dross of mystery
right here on my altar there congregates
a ferment of reptiles and thistles
the dry resin of a lightning flash
the vomit of my survivors.

And thus beset
  and garlanded with stigmas
this is my haven of brittle treasures.


Speculum II

I'm the dark depths of a remembrance
guarding silence in that chasm
the camel of the blind spot
the shadow stitched into my bones
the crash that devours what erupts
the softness of the lower world
God's dreaming exhalations.

I'm His most hallowed abyss
in the light of His eternal agony.


 IV
Death at Daybreak


I

You discover another life
in the past
it's your combat
your sorrow
and your silence
at first light

bereaved as you are
of that shadow
death haunts
dark at daybreak.


II

I'm dying within myself
as in you
I'm dying high up in the nothingness of height
alone in the loneliness of my death

I'm here scrutinized numb with cold
helpless in the idle course
of a teardrop

forgive me
I'm from somewhere else
from a life reduced to ashes
from just an instant of doubt.


III

Laughing sadness
you've cost me a lot
my eyelids weigh heavy in your theatre ... I don't know
tormented by your shadow
the passing of the years
the unmoving wheel on which I leaned

for it was this
  wreckage in flames
  footprints lost in the snow
  promises we didn't want to believe

and it was this
  silence without pity
  lure of oblivion
  questions sometimes against sleep
did we know how to love?
did we really want to?


IV

Death is singing
  can't you hear?

your child is coming
  are you in time?

you stop
  does it make sense?

Are you singing or dying?


V

What I dream is blind
it's the unnameable blow
the pain which can't be named
the duplicity of that blow

what I dream is blind
mask that uncovers my face
silence that proclaims me
rasping of desecrated light

but I'm far away
in the porous hills of death
there where my lips are singing
are singing
to the poet's spit.


VI

Footsteps on the stairway
  is it me?
dark intimations that I'm
  somewhere else
careless of my being
in the spectral whiteness
where chronicles begin
the shadow of what I am
  sunk without trace
ink upon ink
fountain without birds
final harbour.


VII

  Believe I'm visible
in a drunkard's sarcasm
in the forbidden word
in the lie that protects me

believe I'm in you
as if your presence were enough
your body now visible
in the blindest transparency
  of my eyes.


VIII

It's not certain
and it's from somewhere else
the air holds the promise
and the promise isn't you

in the descent
in what has no form
in what you couldn't express
the air holds that promise

in the covetous light of your dreams
in the pittance
you covered with gold
lies the answer

here's what you waited for
the bitter fountain of the rain
its tortured babbling

here are your eyes
burning
in the salt of your wounds.


V
Seduction of the Shadow


I

I'm going with you:
my silence, my pain, this immovable grief.
I'm going without knowing where:
deserts, bleak uplands, cities that bristle with rage,
vagrant delusions, intimate gaol.

I'm going with you
(we're crossing through night-time and storm):
single handed, a fugitive,
no words to offer,
only true to your path.

Though nothing and no-one await us,
just remembrance of friendship,
come on - why be sad?
Though I've no comfort to offer
already I've lived quite enough.

I'll follow your footsteps forever. No rest.


II

I didn't want you for myself:
you mirrored my insults with spite.
I didn't seek to hide
but you stuck to my face without pity.

Today, I woke up and
knew that you'd waited behind:
huddled down in some dream,
you were shielding me there.

But now that the skin
of my face overlays,
you see with my eyes
and you speak with my mouth.


III

The bond that unites us isn't moral but vital:
this erosion, this bitter withdrawal,
this one-way gaol of impassable pain;
the last, the cold resolution that rides on my bones
and throbs in my brains.

Silent my mouth,
it's my heart that says this, its blind
palpitations a bond
from the innermost part of the world:
body and soul, a life that we've loved
to a point beyond bearing.
Ours is this fierce separation,
never-ending, alone.

Yet I hold out my hand:
our journey is long and there's no turning back.


IV

May this love wound not
forswear but return to
me the stygian flower

and may Buddha's lotus
unfold from my blood
ten times a thousand shining petals.


V

No not blinded yet
avow your hardship
decant your bitterness
cast off your illusions

brighten my way
attend my silence
moderate my mind

oracle that you are
oppose this endless night's
despair.


VI

In a forest of words
I've lost myself so many times
with all the frenzy of inflamed desire.

Nothing took me there
but this wild craving
this thirst to vindicate  in me  the world
fever of guilt and release from sin.

But now that I'm on the other side
the distant fire of man corrupts
earth and sky becoming shadow.

This smoky cloud of words
today I am that forest
its soundless vertigo
its dense unease.


VII

Mine are another's hands
another's my face   my distance.
Reclining at the foot of a tree
I seem to wander far away
my silence bespeaks tumult
my secrets are made of glass.

One and double I play my truths to the death
when I tell my lies.

Ubiquitous devil ... my dice are loaded.


VIII

Whirling of silk   radiant dove
you shape and consume yourself in the air
muse of your own primal dance

sleepless night   harsh endearment
you come and yet you go
a tear brimming with absence

but was it you
passing through the cool of a daydream?

or was it your brightness
seeds of the moon   shadowy silk?


IX

Cloudy and dark you come
to the windswept plain of my abandon.
An unearthly silence enfolds me.
The birds have taken flight
and now the air is still.
Nothing moves in the unbounded sky
save for your shadow.


X

Don't point at me
temptress
avert your gaze
I'm the rain
oblivion
the wind
forsaken evening.


XI

Don't ask, hurl me
your shadow, your mystery,
your warm and fragrant breath.
Tell me nothing,
heighten the whisperings,
the currents of underwater fire.
No, not naked,
just linger, nibbling as you sigh,
and move along my body
with the silken spike of your tongue.
Don't rise up in restraint, Lilith, but drink
the blood that you draw, O trembling
mistress of my joy.


XII

The jackal will finish off that emaciated angel.

On the way, in the small hours,
the creatures of my dream get back their instinct:
sleek skin in motion,
electric of my temples.

That arupo tree mislaying its fragrance,
the stream meandering on the hill,
that ibis and the moon owl,
all feed together on shared light.

Fecundity sacred and arcane:
your vapour swathes the visible
and everything trembles, in the small hours, on my way.


XIII

When I arise
lord of my death
I embrace my shadow
and advance to the secret.

Come with me wayfarer
to the top of the ancient hollow
this shadow climbs robustly
unfolds   foretells itself
is light but light divine.


XIV

bitter that love
bitter for happy
bitter for lewd
bitter for lost

if I still dream of your body
in me
pour not your aloes
embers of my grief

love bitter
love joyful
love salacious
I laid down my arms
and you killed me with them


XV

darkness tender
darkness female
darkness ethereal
you flutter your wings   bring me to you
you part your lips   give me your wine
you gird your breasts   listen to my heart
you caress your womb   breathe forth your redolence

gossamer darkness
lighten my way
exalt my body
restore your mystery


XVI

  Ward off this vanity
this brazenness
this bogus revelation
this mournful tone

only be yourself
unending
frail
melodious.


XVII

The wheel of my mind I will not move
but that of my heart
may one hand be enclosed in another
in another may one look be entranced
may one body another pervade.

The wheel of my mind that will I move
not that of my heart
may that passion gently pour
may it be precipitate
dearest shadow
tenuousness of here and now.


XVIII

I'm thirsty: they give me salt.
I'm tired: they offer me a bed of nails.
I'm sad, defeated and alone: they present me with a mirror.
That's how I recognize today our human tribute.


XIX

May it be mine
the flower burgeoning from pain
mine its tremulous perfume
mine its twofold open wound
and mine the thorns of its heart.





VI
The Light Restored


Instant

Only the joy of a perfect chord

the hallowed presence of the shade
the poem without words
the fragile creature of dreams.



Migration

Full moon on the sea
a game of cards in the neighbourhood
the children running on the beach

now not even to silence am I tied.



Fluttering

Labyrinthine stillness of the wind
that the swallow crosses
to reach my hands

still-warm nest of moon and lightning.



Metamorphosis

I did away with my old worm-eaten self.
How much light chimes   between   my hands.



Gifts of the Light

The wing of death beats a retreat.

I give a grain of sesame
to the one who guards the dawn.



Final Birth

I shall not lavish gold with my words
only orange blossom   shadow   silence.



Meditation

Many ideas
few ideas
no idea

only the wind
that marvellously blows.



Mental Canvas

Interior work at daybreak
beautiful apron stained with colours.



Nymph

Twin-sexed flake of foil
shimmering among dolphins.

It settles in the corner of my mouth
in my secret rejoicing.



Buddha's Squaredance

On leaving the labyrinthe
how much light whispers

I walk everywhere and nowhere

my song sings of itself
like the flower of Udambara
that blooms but once.






         CONTENTS

            I Figurations

The Cross of Exile
Quicksilver of the Possessed
Dead of Night
Figurations
Recovered from the distance...
Temptation of the Sphere
Tempest
The Third Death
Intermezzo

            II Other temptations

Corps de Noh
Pas de Dieux
Necromancy
Emblem
By the Estuary

            III  Speculum

Emanation
Cleansing
Sacrament
Face
Speculum I
Speculum II

            IV Death at Daybreak

I to VII

            V Seduction of the Shadow

I to XIX

            VI The Light Restored

Instant
Migration
Fluttering
Metamorphosis
Gifts of the Light
Final Birth
Meditation
Mental Canvas
Nymph
Buddha's Squaredance