The Accent of Yangana

I didn’t know it but
as a child I spoke the most beautiful language in the world.

The S’s were butterflies
the double L’s smiles
the double R’s rattles
the I’s rays of light
(while some poor E’s disappeared
between drums and cowbells)
but above all
when we played marbles in the dirt
the verbs were a unanimous forest
full of birds
the imperatives between glances
were a clamor
they were communion with my hundred brothers and sisters
they were a long blanket
they were Yangana in the skin
and in the understanding.

Now I know it
now that I’ve been playing at other things
in other worlds
the words of people reach me
only up to a meter’s distance
I hear just a dull noise
with no light
gray
that bounces
and evaporates.

And when I respond with words
my gerunds complain of toothache
my possessive pronouns are shoes on the wrong foot
my anachronistic adjectives
complain of cold as they leave my mouth
I want to respond with numbers
to numbers
with kindness
to kindness
and my syllables faint.

So I use my arm
to say “far away”
I frown to say “what?”
and I continue mute
deaf
resigned.

I Dreamed of an Imperfect Tree

I dreamed of an imperfect tree
without leaves
without branches
like an old post
with fruits I did not recognize
although I knew they were good.

Everything was vague
there were perhaps two men relaxing
but no details
no stones
no obstacles
only imprecise textures
that I observed
with pleasure and amazement.

I wake up
What solace do I look for in thermometers?
What do I find
in the pace of wall clocks
with their imperturbable tempo giusto?
I march to the beat of numbers
I surrender to asterisks
to grooves
to staircases
to beats per second
to upcoming deadlines
to the chisel correcting angles that aren’t straight
What is it in millimeters
that comforts me?
the calendar
the barometer
the altimeter
the blood pressure monitor
the magnifying glass
what sort of calm do they foreshadow?

To live without scaffolding
without lie detectors
without a color that separates
"already done" from " I will"
to simply use
the left eye
to evaluate the wisdom of the silent one
the semi-closed right eye
to detect the illness of the hypochondriac
a deep breath
to understand the provincial
disguised as cosmopolitan
the palm of the hand on the shoulder
to discover the bitterness
of the good samaritan
and the affection of the shouter of insults
the shyness of the chatterbox
the tremor of the one without fear
the repentance of the volunteer
that’s what I want.

To walk on the hill of my dreams
where the most accurate instrument
is my foot
in its double sock
where the only currency
is the smooth incongruity of people
where patience wraps everything
like mist
and to accept the lies of the sincere
and to listen
listen
listen
to those who want to speak
but cannot.

Paulita

She speaks a language beyond human language
a language of oceans
the language of the wind
she speaks a poetry of syllables long
as pedals
a poetry of faltering noises
of mantras
oracles without time
molecular chess
she says loose words
that don’t say what she says
concepts
that have traveled to other universes
and have returned loaded with secrets
that I don’t understand.

She repeats her mantras
alternated with smiles
with absences
again and again
ioyou ioyou ioyou
imperatively and without urgency
bownt bownt
shai shai
uh uh uh uh uh uh uh
and then a hand gesture
repeated one thousand times
the same gesture with a thousand different meanings.

She lives in moments
long
like a long dream
frozen
she has the innocence
of a stray leaf
any child could fool her
a tiny rock in her path
could make her fall
and she falls
and falls
she truly falls
as Man falls
and she rises
rises
rises.

When she looks into my eyes
I see something
like God in there
something like all of humanity
past and future
revealing something to me
that I can’t understand.

What I understand
is her wisdom of abandonment
of letting go
of relinquishing
she teaches me the certainty
of the wood that splinters
of the paint that peels
of the lamp that falls and breaks
because at the end
everything falls.

Everything breaks.

Monosyllables

As a young man I spoke in laughter
without thinking without waiting without pronouncing
the banal gesture of a friend was enough
to make me see everything in tangerine
without any notion of kneecaps or the future
then came beds and hills and more nouns
the shout became footsteps
the spark became water and symmetry
there were high mountains and parentheses
and then I unburdened myself of rings
my syntax became thin
now I can predict
that one day I’ll speak only in stoic tones
like salamanders
like lizards
and I’ll speak in monosyllables
sincere as knives
and my rhetoric will be barely that
of a chessboard
abandoned in a corner
without queens without horses without rivers
or perhaps I’ll just speak in glances and sighs
Where did I leave the lamp?
and the wheat?
I walk slowly
imperturbable
to the precipice
of the afternoon
Who’s that!
When!
How!
my temple
the sea
my eye
I am
was
he
&
.

Reading of Silence

(To Carlos Trujillo)

In my thoughts I write silence
I write space
blue
emptiness
immensity
I write scent
cloud
I write dark
warm.

It doesn’t work
these silences don’t work
I delete them vehemently.
They can’t be deleted
silence can’t be deleted
it transforms itself
it multiplies:
there is the silence of a whistle
a silence of a guitar arpeggio
an unintelligible whisper and children
the slamming of a door
a dog
a power saw
an airplane
all disordered as grasshoppers
unpredictable.

Silence is the absence of explosion
I agree
but
what of the absence of friends drinking wine?
and of the blackbirds
of the orphaned glass of water
of the Yangana valley seen from the mountain.

They summon me
the silences summon me
they scream at me
and reverberate
more
and more.

About Happiness

A comfortable armchair
the distant sound of a train
a conversation between neighbors outside
unintelligible
intermittent
that becomes a tone
gray
the sound of the TV becoming choppy
like the waves
becoming a park with a warm breeze and ducks
without me noticing
a phrase that becomes a turtle
a friend who walks and tells me things
in a dimension that is neither time
nor space
a large semi-transparent mass
smooth and pleasant
as a very slow avalanche
with no angles no colors no scents
advances
slowly
enveloping everything
up to my body
which I don’t feel
I'm left without weight
without muscles
without nails
without hunger
without pain
without need for anything
without past without future
only now
and there
there it happened
it must have been three in the afternoon.

Yangana in Havertown

When I say three times
yangana
the skeletal trees
will become covered in leaves
and the lamp posts will be trees full of oranges
and a hundred light-blue squirrels
will march in file
to the treetops
and will fly south
like geese
and there will be a parade of bicycles
made of lilies
and then
the cranky neighbor
will come out of his house and hand out rings to passersby
and a child will loudly recite
life's truths
and also
the goalkeeper
will dance a few ballet steps before kicking the ball
the congressman
will crow in the middle of his speech
the new Pope
will do the merengue at the inauguration ceremony
and furthermore
most importantly
listen carefully
I’ll be completely happy
yangana
yangana
yangana.

A Telegram

My father takes out pen and paper
"JOSEMAR
VILCABAMBA
WEDNESDAY FAMILY THERE
PREPARE MULES STOP"
With the paper in hand we go
to the house of the old telegraphist
at the corner of the village square
Doña Aurorita opens the old door
and tells us about her ailments
for a long time
my siblings and I sit on a wooden waiting bench
I fall asleep there
I hear the Morse code's asymmetrical rhythm
the letters the spaces the stops
becoming white ants
I see electricity
traveling from pole to pole along the river
all the way down to Vilcabamba
José Martajo is saddling some horses
who flick away flies with their tails
I see a row of horsemen framing the mountains
with bags and hats
I hear a clamor of people hugging
there is wood-oven smoke and roasted coffee
I hear a toddler's voice
"CANDY DOÍTA
CANDY DOÍTA
CANDY DOÍTA "
I open my eyes
there is a little boy I don’t recognize
shy
disheveled
stretching his open hand to Doña Aurorita

Link

With a pair of plyers in each hand
and a thick piece of wire
he made a double ring in the shape of an eight
like a link
he tied it between a leather rope and a horse muzzle
and he said satisfied
“Do you like how your father works?”
He was 53
and at 81
in a hospital bed
he babbled
hijo
hijo
and then to my sisters
hija
hija
and we all cried
he closed his eyes and frowned
as if he were also crying
but his was already a body without tears.

The Names

With his name
that sounds like a white stone
hard
bold
he landed on a southern beach
four centuries ago.

He would have had a blind man’s sense of smell
he would have multiplied his cattle
opened the first telegraph office
fathered hundreds of men
down to my grandfather
and my father
and me.

His women
the ones who tied the rivers
and tamed the fire
and gave birth again and again
what sound
did their names have?
the sound of the moon?
the sound of clay?

I want to retrace the path
that that Basque took
hear the names that the wind brings
witness the rite
follow all the branches of the path
memorize the eyes of the man
I would have killed
go back south on the same stone road
bathe naked on that beach
and sail.

And reach Álava in the afternoon
to find in the square the old lady dressed in black
and give her a hug of dust
and of stars
make her into sand
tell her I'm her thousandth part
her whole
and ask her by which streets they came
all those who made her
because I want to go beyond
to the oceans of Africa
and even farther behind
keep following the maze that goes and goes
to get lost
in the breeze
in the atoms
in the zero.

Boundaries

I.

Improbable things
to glimpse the other side of the cliff
from the other side itself
to be aware of the exact moment
I fall asleep
not to cross the boundary
until I cross it
without crossing it
see the threads of dreams from inside
and see myself floating in the air
and actually float
laugh with the conjured uncle
touch beauty
and the naked joy
and jealousy
and even the cliff and pain
are
flesh and blood.

II.

To pour the last drop of water
in the glass already full
and then another
and another
without overflowing it
to inflate the balloon
up to the last and definitive millimeter
without bursting it
walk on the edge
of the edge
of the abyss
summoning the vertigo
and fall
without falling.

III.

To stay leaning against a wall
when the bell that marks the end of the break
resonates already throughout the school
to see my little mates running to class
and to stay a minute longer
a second longer
and another
until there are no more children in the yard
and
when my agitation
is already in free fall
only then
to run
to run
to run
and the door shuts just
behind me.

IV.

The very long cable
absolutely straight
the boulevard at noon at a photographic rest
total silence
to see myself from the neighbor’s window
to be on top of the skyscraper
and see myself there from the faraway sea
and vice versa
being and not being.

V.

Things unlikely
and imperative.

The Most Profound Thought

I.

As a child
I saw a blade of grass
common and ordinary
a little darker than the other thousands
I made myself the promise to remember it
for the rest of my life.

II.

To hurry
to drink water
to sing in one’s head
to remember one’s friends
to talk
to rush to watch the clouds
to breathe there is no time
to be right
to correct
and besides we are always wrong.

III.

The thing is simple
we live
and we die
the rest is a little music of the wind and the moon
and by the way
to continue I declare the deepest thought
that I’ll have ever had: