By Ezequiel Zaidenwerg. Translated by Robin Myers.
versión en español
1. Lyric Poetry is Dead
I. Lyric Poetry is Dead:[1]
left marooned
in a hypnotic backwater of sleep, while,
beyond the final clot of consciousness,
around the silver-canopied four-poster,
beside the shoddy bed of wood and thorns,
the family gathered,
waiting for the moment to initiate
the succession.
With all the human senses spent, the capsule
of wind that held her spirit
rose up, bound for the gales, dissolved into
a centrifugal gust of light, just like Elijah in the whirlwind,
raised skyward in a chariot of fire.
And though her life had died,
her memory left little consolation: the waters went unparted,
and no Elisha came forth as successor.
Oblivious to the omen
and conspiring, they took away the body
and an imposter came to dictate a false will,
and covered himself in her bedclothes,
which were still warm.
Lyric poetry
is dead. “Of natural causes,” as
the spokesman stated, “after battling
a cruel disease
for many years.”
(End of press release.)
“With great
regret, her sons and daughters,
her grandsons, granddaughters, and loving husband
inform the public of her passing, humbly requesting
prayers in her memory.”
Lyric poetry
is dead. A century and a half ago,
although her heirs still seem to be the same
–their skin’s still smooth; they walk erect and unassisted–,
only now, after a thousand
and one judicial onslaughts, has the case
(IN RE ESTATE OF LYRIC POETRY)
been closed, and is it possible
to proceed with the final liquidation of the estate.
AVAILABLE PROPERTIES:
Great opportunity. Tower for sale. .
Façade engraved with striking marble accents. Purpose:
state or commercial offices. To be recycled.
No windows and no bathrooms.
Incredible variety of mirrors.
II. The Slaughterhouse[2]
Lyric poetry is dead. They came for her
after they had come for the communists, the Catholics,
the Jews, et cetera; in short, as soon
as they’d obliterated everyone who still
believed in something. Me, I wasn’t worried when
they captured her. (I bet you know by now
where this is headed.) It’s a lie that everyone
is necessary, guys, and anyway, it wasn’t Brecht
who wrote that poem.
(But what was it that happened,
you ask? Forgive me; I digress.) It was around Eastertime
and in broad daylight. I was there, coincidentally,
and witnessed everything: she
was in her car (expensive, I must say,
to roam around those neighborhoods);
suddenly, a refrigerated truck
pulled out in front. Both hit the brakes.
A toothless man with greasy hair
and thick-rimmed glasses gets out of the truck
and starts to tell her off. (Actually, all
was engineered
ahead of time.) She steps out of the car. “Please,”
she says, “calm down.” “I won’t calm down,”
replies the toothless man, abruptly pulling out
a gun he’d hidden in his clothes, now shimmering
beneath the sun.
And from that moment forward,
as I remember, everything moves faster.
He yelled at her to get inside,
in back, to keep the cattle company.
But she refused. And facing the denial,
he struck her with the handle of the gun
and threw her onto the hood of the car.
They struggled, and the toothless man
seizes at her from behind,
pulled up her dress. She shouted something
I can’t recall, and then a stream of blood
gushed from her mouth (exploding out of nowhere, like
blood sausage when it’s left too long
to cook. I thought
–this part I do remember– of poetic
justice).
The final image
still branded in my memory is one
of her high heels, split open, on the pavement,
and then the gem-like moon that glistened in
the pool of blood.
III. Alfredo Yabrán[3]
Lyric poetry is dead. And don’t forget it.
For my part, I prefer to think of her
as in the only photo leaked
to the press: eyes so blue that they seemed
empty, the bronzed belly,
the proud head covered with a thicket
of silver; the same one that, in the vast
solitude of the plains, knowing she was surrounded,
exploded in a deep red blot.
Don’t you forget it,
don’t you deny her death: it’s literal, the proof
is plain, and although some still speculate that she’s alive,
that they’d replaced her with the body of a double (or a dummy!),
and that she’d crossed the border and is safe,
is laughing at us as she drinks a daiquiri
that lasts forever in the eternal postcard
of summer in the tropics, it was you who killed her:
your provocations, your repeated sieges on
her privacy, the accusations
–ghostly businesses
and legion of protean dummies, links
to sundry mafias, connections with the government
and security forces of a dozen countries—
they pushed her slowly, inch by inch, until
she went over the edge;
and though they may maintain that, if indeed she died,
oblivious to the facts, they deem it necessary even so,
a time bomb that could detonate in anybody’s
face (and whose better than her own?), denying that
they found their scapegoat,
you are to blame,
it was you who killed her.
IV. The Hands[4]
Inside the crypt, they didn’t want
to speak, and they could only hear,
within the vault’s deep silence,
the rumble of the generator. They
went down the narrow spiral staircase,
carved from white marble, leading
below the ground. A baleful omen soon
appeared: they saw
that there were roughly twenty blows
dealt to the armored glass; a hole
lay at the center. They would later note
the absence of the hand-penned poem
the widow had deposited (“your hand
of love draws near / like snow-white butterflies”),
which should have been upon
the casket.
Right away, the judge
instructed them to open up the niche’s
four locks, and as it neared
nine-thirty at night, they started in
on opening the coffin. At first
they thought it closed, but soon
the evidence proved otherwise: it too
was pierced with holes. However,
the experts judged that the profaners
had made the opening in the glass
as a distraction: they’d most likely reached
the body using keys alone
and the complicity of the cemetery
watchmen.
Once they’d removed the lid,
they saw the corpse at last, which wore
the ornaments of a lieutenant general
in blue and red and gold;
the presidential sash still lay across
her chest, joined at the belt.
Those present noticed instantly
that the cadaver’s wrists, injected with
formaldehyde after her death
so that she wouldn’t decompose,
were now exposed, and found
a coating of fine dust between the body and
the box.
Her face and flesh remained,
incredibly, nearly intact,
as if they had been mummified.
Her skin was of a greenish brown;
her hair, still black, stuck to
her skull. In the sarcophagus,
they saw the hat of a superior officer, but
the sword was gone.
The flag that previously cloaked
the outside of the coffin now
appeared inside it. On her chest
was placed the rosary that she had held
between her hands before. The left wrist
was cut along the boundary of
the lower edge. By contrast, on the other wrist,
the cut was higher.
V. Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna[5]
Lyric poetry is dead.
In that one photograph
that went around the world, the strangest company
encircles the cadaver: three
civilians (two observe it, curious, while the third
averts his eyes); a pair of soldiers
with frightened faces; one photographer,
back to the camera, with three quarters of his body
out of the frame; and two
officials dressed in ornamented uniforms:
one glances to the camera pointed at him
while he supports the lifeless head,
posed like a hunter with his trophy;
the other, who appears of higher rank,
points with his right-hand index finger
to where the heart had beat,
as if he could revive it with his touch.
With open eyes and a clear stare,
the body seems like it could rise, a Lazarus
returned to life for just an instant,
if only to sink back at once
in death.
Lyric poetry is dead.
And I imagine
what they’ll be saying, those who had believed in her
to justify it
(the same as always):
that she was not herself the light,
that she came only as a witness to the light;
and that she came to that which was her own,
and yet her own did not receive her.
What’s certain is, it went like this:
we captured her at dawn,
maimed by a bullet in the leg
after an ambush that had lasted
from noon till late,
the night far gone.
In those conditions, even so,
—not just the leg; the asthma too, oppressing
the lungs—, she’d persevered in combat,
until her rifle was destroyed completely
after a shot that crushed the barrel;
in any case, the pistol’s magazine
was empty.
Moved to the barracks
(which used to be a school), to be interrogated,
she said beauty was patience
and spoke of lilies—what
are lilies like? I’ve never seen one—,
which, in the field,
after so many nights under the earth,
break through one day
from straight green stalk to white corolla.
But here, in these parts,
everything grows chaotically and without purpose,
and I, who came to the world and grew up
ferociously, against and then despite it all,
like grass that struggles up between the pavement cracks,
flattened by passing cars—but here
the roads aren’t paved, and there are hardly any cars—,
I couldn’t understand that she, delivered into everything,
her parents’ own investment in the future
—and time, to her, was like an arrow moving deliberately
toward its conclusion, while to me it was a sequence regulated
not by the urgency of longing, nor the instinct’s deaf impressions,
but rather something sacred, though remote—;
I couldn’t understand how she’d abandon
what she had left behind (the aimlessness
of comfortable existence, or perhaps an excess
of arbitration?) to come to this wilderness
where everything can grow,
but only hunger thrives,
to go in circles, and to witness how her comrades fell
one by one, in combat with an adversary
innumerable in its members
and their invisible divisions,
battling for the triumphant glory
of an Idea: we, born here
in this wild place,
where nature still
exists distinctly from the will of man,
learn early in our lives that liberty
is never of this world, and love
is act, not potency.
But I said nothing.
And then there was a silence:
while we interrogated her, we heard
the charge to kill her. (Whatever happened to her hands
was after she had died. I didn’t see it. I even heard
about an order to cut off her head,
which was defied.)
Some hours passed.
A captain told us we should wait
in case there were a counter-order,
which never came (the radio already informing of her death).
Midday arrived. We had to kill her.
And as for how the facts were given,
it isn’t true: that we could hardly bear it,
and so we drank to give us courage,
and even then we couldn’t.
We simply did
what they had ordered us to do:
we went into the room where we were keeping her
and killed her as you’d kill an animal
that you had raised to eat.
VI. Dr. Pedro Ara[6]
…and so, after that false alarm
the week before, the days went on
without a single symptom that
could come to wilt my hope
that they’d perhaps forgotten
me, but at five o’clock in the afternoon
on that historic day, they called
to tell me that at six they’d come
for me. Against my custom
of always being too trustful, I
resolved, for the first time, to act
with care and order, setting out
to write a draft, with all
the requisite conditions corresponding to
the task; among them, due to basic diplomatic
propriety, the funding
was not included. I
was seeing to it when the doctor and
his men appeared, arriving later
than I’d been told. There was
a curt exchange of words: lyric poetry,
according to my visitors,
was dying, and she surely would
have passed away before
we made it there.
The radio
had not yet aired the news;
and even so, police
had cordoned off the area
and blocked all traffic. Nonetheless,
a large crowd had begun to gather, silently,
before the residence’s gates
and in adjoining gardens. Kneeling in
the dampened earth throughout
the winter night, hands clutching lighted candles,
the women prayed. Beside them, hundreds, even
thousands of men in silent groups.
None knew us; but, observing how
the guards allowed us through,
they asked us, “Is it true
that lyric poetry is dead?
We pressed on
without replying, quite affected,
and moved into the residence,
where we were led into a hall.
The Secretary arrived at once,
announcing: “Lyric poetry, at eight twenty-five
today, has passed into eternity.
The President would like the corpse
to be prepared, displayed before the people, and
deposited into a monumental crypt
that we will have to build.”
After presenting an objection
–that it would be perhaps more fitting to
entrust the labor to some expert from the nation–,
which was disdained, I offered up
the draft of the conditions
–omitting all the budgetary ones–;
the Secretary came back within minutes
bearing the presidential approbation.
There was no time to lose:
I quickly gathered all the necessary elements;
the problem of securing an assistant
was the most arduous to resolve:
as luck would have it, I recalled a countryman,
strong, modest, honorable and accustomed to
forensic work. It was no easy task
to locate him; his home was in a dark
and distant neighborhood, in which I went
in many circles, driving through spills and potholes,
until I found him. I didn’t tell him what we’d do
or where. But I did make him promise not
to tell a soul, not even his own family,
of what he’d hear or see that night.
We bought a few more items on the way,
and soon we reached the presidential house.
He couldn’t hide his shock on seeing that
the President held out his hand, embraced him.
We entered, the two of us, the burial chamber.
There slept, upon the bed, forever,
the specter of a strange and tranquil beauty,
free at last from matter and its cruel torment,
corroded to the limit. Science had
subjected her to a mental torture, with
a hope for miracles, prolonging the affliction.
Beside her was her doctor, who, on seeing me,
commenced to leave. A priest
positioned at her feet, and other doctors,
close relatives and friends,
all prayed aloud. Her mother was
the first to stand. She brought her hands
together, stared at me as in a gesture
of supplication, and departed, leaning on
her sons; and soon the others followed her,
and finally the priest, who told me as
he passed: “May God enlighten you!”
And we were left alone inside the room.
Lying there before us, withered to
the boundaries of the imagination, was
the woman most admired, feared,
beloved, hated of her time.
She had ferociously done battle with
the greatest and now there she was,
defeated by the infinitely small.
But she must not have feared
her death: she awaited it as we await
a guest we knew would come.
Had she begun her preparations since
her zenith’s rosy days? Whom did she think
she’d meet upon the other shore?
I barely know that on the other shore
is History, which not just anyone can reach…
VII. Harun al-Rashid[7]
Lyric poetry is dead.
The story goes:
exasperated by the indulgences
of her viziers, procurers, chamberlains and aides,
and of the well-hung hunks among the harem and the eunuchs,
she would slip out at night, without a chaperone,
attired as a beggar (or was it as a merchant?),
to travel through the city’s farthest neighborhoods
and find out what her subjects
sincerely thought of her.
One night, as sleeplessness
and heat boiled high, and caustic blasts
of desert dust blew forth, she dressed, as she had done
so many times before, in her false sideburns and
cosmetic locks, and crept out of the green-domed palace through
the golden door, unseen.
The towering minarets,
now silent, fell behind her,
as did the guard barracks, the parks and plazas and
the market’s darkened stalls,
until at last she moved beyond the ring of ramparts, with
the wordless acquiescence of
a sleeping watchman.
Once outside the citadel,
a squalid river breeze
received her, striking at her face;
she walked through spacious avenues
where nighttime traffic roared,
and following a side street,
she halted in a filthy alleyway, filled
with drunkards coughing in their sleep
and piles of cardboard drenched
by urinating dogs
and greasy rain.
All of a sudden,
she heard a shout, and then the crash
of something falling to the ground
and steps close by.
Afraid,
she ran in no particular direction, until she came
upon the soothing presence of
the train tracks, hidden by
a massive labyrinth of
containers by the port;
and she continued bordering
the boundary wall, and took the road
so often traveled.
Soon she glimpsed
the highway and the smattering of buildings
that dared, within that settlement,
to rise up from the soil.
Approaching it,
and finding there the main dirt road,
the shaky brick and tin-
plate shacks, the route of dingy passageways,
she felt a rush of fear; but even
so, her teeth watered, and
she crossed the sordid passages
until she reached the door she knew.
Inside,
the customary scene recurred: after
she moved across the closest room,
in which a girl breastfed a baby,
the other children sleeping on the floor, she entered
the back bedroom. The men,
the same ones, with their haunted looks, all bored
before the television. Everything
was almost like it always was; and she was just
about to go, bags pressed into her fists, when
one of the men, this time,
in adding up the bills, surprised, amused,
observed the likeness printed on the paper,
which seemed to emulate the features of
that frequent client:
he let out a guffaw, and when he’d showed it to
the rest, who laughed in turn, he shot.
Lyric poetry is dead. The caliphate
is finished, sunk among its vices; but
how many miss, unknowingly,
its baubles, its cheap splendor,
the eternal adolescence of the spirit?
VIII. The New Clothes[8]
Lyric poetry is dead. She died of shame.
The whole world knows the story:
some men came to the city,
who were, or so they said, great tailors,
and after asking for an audience, they offered
to fashion her a suit, unequalled in
its fineness and its beauty, which, however,
would be invisible to all
those who turned out not to be
sons of the fathers they had thought.
Enthusiastic at the prospect of
unmasking all the bastards and ensuring
the ethnic purity of all
her lands, she granted her approval.
She enjoined that they receive a palace
and all the gold and silver they could ask for.
The men installed their looms
and made it clear that they’d be working at the cloth
the whole day long; after a while,
one of the two went out and stated that
the suit, which they’d begun, was
the most magnificent thing in the world.
The sovereign sent an acolyte to see it,
her private steward, and he said
he had, confirming what
the clothiers had told Her Highness,
for fear they’d brought
her lineage into question. Later,
another subject went, upon her orders,
before the tailors and
inspected their activity,
and then another and another; and each one
corroborated all the prior versions.
Until a grand soiree was held, and all
implored their sovereign to
inaugurate the garment. In the palace
the expert dressmakers stepped forward with
the fine cloths cut and sown
to dress the monarch. Soon
the task was finished and the sovereign
made her way toward the city
for the parade. As it was summer,
the suit was very comfortable. At once
she made her grand appearance
before the masses gathered there.
Lyric poetry
is dead of shame: in
the groin a timid clapper, a trembling bouquet
devoured by flies, all covered in
the gauzy cellophane of air:
and no one, laughing, points it out to her.
IX. Sibyl of Cumae[9]
Lyric poetry is dead,
and yet the last time I went to take her pulse,
I found her still alive:
held captive in a jail of tin and wire
(or was it actually a plastic jar? –in truth, I don’t remember–),
suspended from the cables
of a high-voltage tower in a humble suburb.
More ancient, miserable and crook-backed every day, she
was fodder for the lice and doves, and all the local boys
amused themselves by tossing balls against the bars,
and laughing when she lost her balance;
and when they tired of it, they asked her,
“What do you want? But really, what is it you want?”
And she’d respond: “I…I? I want to die.”
X. Death of Orpheus[10]
Lyric poetry is dead. This fact
is indisputable. And yet, in truth,
and should it serve as comfort to some soul, in
her end was her beginning.
While with her song
she dragged the forests after her, and led all creatures in procession,
and moved the stones to follow her, it happened that some men,
intoxicated on spilled drink and lust unsipped, descry her from a hillside’s
edge, as she strummed her lyre,
accompanying her songs. And one,
his hair disheveled in the gentle breeze, “There, there
she is,” he cries, “the one who snubbed us,”
and aiming at her mouth mid-song, he shoots a branch
that, being spread with foliage,
creates a mark without a wound. Another’s weapon is
a stone, which, hurled through the air, is vanquished by
the concert of the voice and lyre,
and tumbles to her feet, as if requesting pardon
for such audacity.
It’s then that all restraint is lost
and violence, reckless, shatters,
for their projectiles, pacified by song,
would have been halted, harmless, in midair,
if the uproar of the palms and drums and cornets
and their frenetic ululation hadn’t overwhelmed the zither’s sounds:
the stones, no longer hearing it (and happy were those
who felt no more), blushed with her blood.
But in the first place, they deprive her of the boundless sum
of birds enchanted by her voice, of serpents, of
the horde of animals, prize for her triumph.
At last, they turn against her,
with their hands dripping blood, and chase her, flinging thyrsi
adorned with emerald leaves,
created for another end. A few throw clods
of earth, and others branches yanked out of their trees,
and others rocks; there is no lack
of arms to fuel their frenzy, as some oxen made
the fields yield to the plow,
and not far off, there were some farmers digging in the soil
to earn, through sweat, its fruits,
and at the sight of the incensed crowd,
escape, leaving their tools behind:
scattered across the empty fields
are spades, long rakes, and heavy mattocks.
Armed with these weapons,
they entertain themselves by slashing all the oxen into pieces first,
then rush to the main course: blasphemes,
they strip the light of she
who held out both her hands, imploring, and for
the first time uttered words to no response,
unable to affect them with her voice.
Through that same mouth, to which the stones had listened
and even animals could understand, her soul,
when she expires, begins its homeward journey toward the winds.
And how the birds, disconsolate, bewailed you,
the mob of beasts, the hard stones and the forests, who
so often yielded to your song!
And the trees (that barely feel) mourned
for you, and let their clipped hair fall,
a sign of grief. It’s even said
the rivers swelled
with all the tears. Her limbs
are strewn about on many sites;
the head and lyre, coincidentally together, end
up in a river in the region;
that is the setting of the miracle:
flowing downstream in
the river, traveling toward the sea,
the tongue, though lifeless, murmurs on, still tearful;
the banks, tearful too, respond;
the lyre, without a hand to strum it,
babbling its baleful bits of ballad.
XI. Sodom and Gomorrah[11]
Lyric poetry is dead.
And though I pleaded
many times for God to kill her
and end my suffering,
I now remember her with bittersweet
nostalgia.
It happened many years ago:
tired of the chaos of the city,
I fled the Capital and took my family
to a small village, isolated in the middle
of the prairie.
The early months
passed happily, unhurried,
among the lethargy of work,
domestic life, and the continual
siestas.
On weekend afternoons,
we’d go to walk around the park
and nod our heads in greeting, always
to the same drowsy faces
whose eyes would brighten only
if someone shared a bit of gossip
with superficial malice.
My sons –as was
expected– were the first
to grow accustomed to that life: they quickly
struck up friendships with the locals,
mingling so closely they could almost be
mistaken for each other, amid the banter
over beer, cars, football, women. As for the others
–my wife, my daughters, and myself–
the adjustment was a bit more difficult,
despite the mildness of the climate,
except for the humidity.
In any
case, such tranquil days
would have to end eventually:
in early autumn, I began to notice
that, underneath the weary plainness
of that provincial folk, there lay concealed
a deviance I wouldn’t want
to find myself required to detail.
And so
our mutual distrust took root;
at first, from our side only,
but it didn’t take them long
to notice it: a slant about the smile,
a lowering of the gaze
in greeting.
As months went on
and days grew shorter,
the strain grew stronger, though
it wouldn’t openly reveal itself
until the winter.
It was
a night of bitter cold. By chance,
some relatives had come to visit
from the city. All seated
at the table, we were sharing
the meat, the bread, the wine, and suddenly
we heard a knock at the front door: we opened it
to find the entire town outside,
assembled at our entrance.
One of the neighbors, who appeared to be
the leader of the angry
mob, demanded:
“Where are
the ones who came tonight to see you?
Bring them, so we can meet them.”
I left the house and closed the door behind me
and begged them all to leave,
but they just sneered:
“And did you really think
that you could come here from the city
to tell us what to do?”
My daughters, seeing
that my efforts were in vain,
leaned out the door and offered,
in exchange for leaving us alone,
to go with them, but even so
they would not be persuaded.
Within the house, my relatives reached out
their hands and, pulling me inside again, closed
the door tightly.
Meanwhile, outside, the townspeople
attempted to tear it down; and others
clutched the metal bars protecting
the windows, making faces
and threatening gestures; they would have
taken us as prisoners, or maybe
something worse, if the unexpected
hadn’t then occurred:
a midnight sun
all of a sudden rose above the plains,
and it was day. Dazzled,
the rabble paused a moment
in their violence; a gentle rain
began to fall,
and from inside we saw the people
raising their hands, receiving it
with joy, and then they started, one by one,
to shed the clothing on their
backs.
And so, the men with naked
torsos, the women in their bras,
they suddenly began to dance
despite the intensifying rain,
although there was no music. The steam
fogged up the windows more
and more, until we could see
nothing from inside. The light
outside appeared to strengthen
and then we felt abruptly that the heat
was rising faster:
we watched enormous raindrops
run down the windowpanes, now clouded over,
our bodies drenched in sweat;
meanwhile, the rain resounded, making it
impossible for any sound
outside to reach us.
All this continued for an hour, an hour and a half.
And then we felt the heat begin to drop,
and all at once the lights went out.
I opened the door hesitantly;
an icy wind struck hard. I found my coat
and stepped into the night, dimly illuminated
by the moon: upon the site
where, moments earlier, had stood a town,
I saw a field of ashes
and the soil itself gave off
a vaguely sweet aroma.
Without delay,
I gathered up my family and we set out,
not really knowing where we’d go;
once we had left behind, at last,
those devastated bounds
that had contained the village, my wife
looked back; with teary eyes
and faltering voice,
she said to me:
“The smoke is rising from the ground
as from an oven.”
Seeing her stiff,
I struck her hard
to force her to react.
We reached the road
soon after and we followed it,
walking for several hours,
until at last we could make out
the poorly lighted sign of a gas station.
From there we used the phone to call for help
from other relatives, who came
by noon to rescue us; so
we commenced our journey to the city,
from which we’d never move
again.
Time passed. And with its passing,
habit
did its work: resentment toward
the prior horror soon became forgetfulness;
forgetfulness submitted to the daily chores
of wanting what was missing, which consumed
my days.
And yet, I’m often wakened
in the night by the distressing sense
that they, the people of the town, were acting
to defend some kind of love exactly like
my own, and I’m tormented by the certainty
that it was all for nothing:
renouncing
both the others and ourselves,
to keep on living
just like always,
just
like in any other place.
XII. The Killing of the Suitors[12]
Lyric poetry is dead. Or so they say:
that twenty years have passed without her, that
her bones are rotting in the ground
or that the ocean’s waves are sweeping them along
while all her wife’s admirers
devour her home.
But she’s alive, and she
is always coming back. Right now, for instance,
alone inside her ship, surrounded by the sea,
she is insistently re-reading Kafavis’s
beloved poem (I wonder:
will she whose ingenuity
was once proverbial
–they called her “the resourceful”—
be swayed by the cliché
of the interior journey?)
and dreaming of the day
that she’ll return, dressed as a beggar,
and weather stoically, with pride,
the insults, blows and taunts
of those who seek to seize her throne.
She dreams, awake, about her only son,
her rightful blood, imagining
the poignant reencounter in
that rustic shack, with music in the background,
appropriately tearful. Already plotting
the alliance with the masses,
in which she will re-conquer
her command. And she can almost see herself
reclining with her wife, upon the very bed
she’d built with her own hands
out of an olive trunk. That said,
the scene projected time and time again
inside her mind is that of gathering them all
onto the patio, alleging some excuse,
all entrances already shut;
and with the sole assistance of her son
and the few faithful servants left,
she’ll show the usurpers who
she is, and kill them,
and kill them all: she imagines, lustily,
with painstaking detail, how she
will take her sword and stir the innards of
an enemy; imagines riddling another’s body
with her projectiles; and
another’s heart, still beating, in
her fist, after she’s yanked it out.
But then she feels a burning reflux rise
up from her innards and exploding suddenly
into her throat and nose,
and ruptures the victorious daydream. Irked,
she shakes her head, deeply inhales,
recovers her composure, stares ahead
and sees she’s still amid the vastness of
the ocean with no land in sight; resigned,
she grips the oars again and puts her back into it.
XIII. On Civil War[13]
Lyric poetry is dead. At last.
The moment that we’ve all been waiting for has come.
Now we can unequivocally say
an era has concluded. The splendid order of the centuries
is being newly shuffled, freshly founded.
An iron child is born for poetry,
and with his advent, through the resignation of the ancient golden lineage,
a steely progeny shall rise up
in its place: in any case, it’s time
for us to sing
of more important matters.
An iron child is born
for poetry, and the horizon darkens with a sole unknown:
Will his parents smile tenderly upon him?
Will bitter laughter overcome them?
Will he view them with scorn? Or with suspicion? Perhaps
what’s worse: will he repay his life and their support
with an indifferent face?
Lyric poetry
is dead. And so it is, although her death
–whether the ones who now take credit for it like it or not–
occurred unceremoniously:
as a tree falls, a nameless trunk amid deep woods
that no one passes through,
she fell. Technique was also lacking:
the cross’s shoddy planks,
the rusty nails, the crown entwined with thorns,
the vinegar-soaked cloth a human hand
with rudimentary skill once warped
–they played no part in the affair,
which had no witnesses, no exemplary punishment,
and came to pass with little forethought,
leaving no mark.
She’s dead. And so it is.
And so a savage destiny sweeps up
the poets and the crime of fratricide,
as of the moment when her blood was spilled,
like a curse on her heirs,
upon the earth:
it happened on a piece of open ground; the blow
surprised her from behind.
She’s dead.
Lyric poetry is dead.
She didn’t die like Christ; they murdered her
Fotografía por Valentina Siniego.
La lírica está muerta
Escrito por Ezequiel Zaidenwerg.
Para A. C. y H. B. V.
1. La lírica está muerta
I. La lírica está muerta:
se quedó
varada en un remanso hipnótico del sueño,
mientras que más allá del coágulo final de la conciencia,
en torno al lecho con dosel de plata,
junto a la cama pobre de madera y espina,
se reunían los deudos,
aguardando el instante de iniciar
la sucesión.
Con todos los sentidos humanos agotados,
la cápsula de viento que tenía su espíritu
se alzó rumbo a las auras, desleída en una racha
centrífuga de luz, igual que Elías en la tempestad, arrebatado
sobre un carro de fuego.
Y aunque murió la vida,
no dejó harto consuelo su memoria: nadie partió las aguas,
ni surgió un Eliseo como sucesor.
Ajenos al prodigio,
en contubernio, se llevaron el cadáver
y vino un impostor para dictar un testamento espurio,
que se arropó con sus cobijas, tibias
todavía.
La lírica
está muerta. “De muerte natural”,
según manifestaron a través de un portavoz,
“tras batallar durante largos años
contra una cruel enfermedad”.
(Fin del comunicado).
“Con profundo
pesar, sus hijos y sus hijas,
sus nietos y sus nietas y su abnegado esposo
participan de su fallecimiento
y ruegan una oración en su memoria”.
Está muerta,
la lírica. Hace ya siglo y medio,
y aunque sus herederos todavía parecen ser los mismos
–aún no peinan canas y caminan erectos, sin ayuda de nadie–,
recién ahora el expediente
(LÍRICA S/SUCESIÓN AB INTESTATO),
tras mil y una ofensivas judiciales,
tiene sentencia firme, y es posible dar curso
a la liquidación definitiva del acervo hereditario:
PROPIEDADES OFRECIDAS:
Gran oportunidad. Se vende torre. Únicamente en block.
Importantes detalles en marfil sobre fachada.
Destino: comercial o dependencias estatales.
A reciclar. Sin baños ni aberturas.
Gran profusión de espejos.
II. El matadero
La lírica está muerta. Vinieron a buscarla
después que se cargaron a judíos, católicos,
comunistas, etcétera; una vez que borraron
a todos, en resumen, los que seguían creyendo
en algo todavía. Yo no me preocupé
cuando se la llevaron. (Supongo que a esta altura
se imaginan el resto). Es mentira que todos
seamos necesarios, y además el poema,
muchachos, no es de Brecht.
(¿Que qué pasó? Perdonen que me vaya
por las ramas). Fue por semana santa,
a plena luz del día. Casualmente,
yo estaba por ahí, y pude verlo todo:
ella andaba en su auto (muy caro, hay que decirlo,
para ir por esos barrios); de repente se cruza
un camión frigorífico. Frenan los dos de golpe.
Un tipo desdentado, de melena grasienta,
con anteojos de culo de botella,
se baja del camión y se pone a increparla. (En realidad,
todo estaba orquestado
de antemano). Se baja ella del auto. “Por favor”,
le pide, “tranquilícese”. “Yo no
me tranquilizo nada”, dice el tipo de los dientes y de pronto saca
un arma que tenía escondida entre la ropa,
y espejeaba ahora al sol.
A partir de ese punto,
en el recuerdo, se acelera todo.
El tipo le gritó que fuera para adentro,
a la parte de atrás, a hacerles compañía
a las reses. Pero ella se negó. Y ante la negativa,
el tipo la golpeó con la culata del arma,
y la tiró sobre el capot del auto.
Forcejearon,
y el tipo de los dientes se le pegó de atrás,
y le subió el vestido. Ella gritó
algo que no recuerdo, y un torrente de sangre
le brotó por la boca, a borbollones. (Explotó de repente,
igual que una morcilla que se deja
demasiado en el fuego. Y yo pensé
–de eso sí me acuerdo– en la justicia
poética).
La última
imagen que me queda en la memoria
es la de un taco de ella, partido, en el asfalto,
y la luna, joyesca, que rielaba
sobre el charco de sangre.
III. Alfredo Yabrán
La lírica está muerta. No se olviden.
Personalmente, yo prefiero recordarla
como en la única foto que se filtró a los medios:
los ojos que de tan celestes parecían
vacíos, el abdomen broncíneo, la cabeza
orgullosa cubierta de un matorral de plata;
la misma que en la inmensa soledad de los llanos,
sabiéndose cercada, hizo estallar
en un borrón granate.
No se olviden,
no nieguen que está muerta: es literal, las pruebas
saltaron a la vista, y aunque algunos especulan todavía con que vive,
que plantaron el cuerpo de un doble (¡o de un muñeco!),
que cruzó la frontera y está a salvo, riéndose de nosotros
mientras toma un daikiri que dura para siempre
en la postal perpetua del verano del trópico,
fueron ustedes los que la mataron:
con sus provocaciones, los ataques
repetidos a su privacidad y las acusaciones
–empresas espectrales
y legión de proteicos testaferros, conexiones con las mafias
más diversas, y vínculos con el poder y los servicios de seguridad
de una docena de países–
la fueron empujando lentamente,
centímetro a centímetro hasta cruzar el límite;
y aunque sostengan que, si de verdad murió, ajenos a los hechos,
de todos modos juzgan que era necesario,
una bomba de tiempo que podía explotarle a cualquiera en la cara
(¿qué mejor que la suya?), y nieguen que encontraron
su cabeza de turco,
ustedes son culpables,
la mataron ustedes.
IV. Las manos
Una vez dentro del sepulcro, nadie
quería hablar, y sólo se escuchaba,
en el hondo silencio de la bóveda,
el ruido de los grupos electrógenos.
Bajaron la escalera caracol
de mármol blanco, estrecha, que llevaba
a los subsuelos. Pronto apareció
un siniestro presagio: comprobaron
que había alrededor de veinte golpes
en el vidrio blindado y, en el medio,
un agujero. Luego notarían
que faltaba el poema manuscrito
depositado por la viuda (“…llega
tu mano de amor / como mariposas
blancas…”), que debería haber estado
sobre el cajón.
Acto seguido, el juez
ordenó abrir las cuatro cerraduras
del nicho, y cuando eran ya la nueve
y media de la noche, comenzaron
a abrir el ataúd. En un principio
parecía cerrado, pero pronto
hubo de comprobarse que también
estaba agujereado. Sin embargo,
era de la opinión de los peritos
que los profanadores habían hecho
el boquete en el vidrio con el fin
de distraer: probablemente habrían
accedido al cadáver con las llaves
y la complicidad de los serenos
del cementerio.
Tras abrir la tapa,
vieron al fin el cuerpo, que lucía
sus galas de teniente general,
con colores azul, rojo y dorado;
tenía sobre el pecho aún la banda
presidencial, unida al cinturón.
Los presentes notaron enseguida
que las muñecas del cadáver, donde
se le había inyectado tras su muerte
formol para evitar que se pudriera,
estaban descubiertas, y que había
polvillo de los huesos entre el cuerpo
y el cajón.
Cara y cuerpo se encontraban,
de manera increíble, casi intactos,
como momificados. Su piel era
de una tonalidad marrón verdosa,
y conservaba su cabello negro
pegado al cráneo. Dentro del sarcófago
se veía la gorra de oficial
superior, pero el sable estaba ausente.
La bandera, que antes envolvía
el féretro por fuera, apareció
dentro del ataúd. Sobre su pecho
se halló el rosario que llevaba antes
entre las manos. La muñeca izquierda
aparecía seccionada al borde
del límite inferior. En la otra, en cambio,
el corte se había hecho más arriba.
V. Ernesto Rafael Guevara de la Serna
La lírica está muerta.
En esa foto
que dio la vuelta al mundo, en torno del cadáver
se ve una extraña compañía: tres
civiles (dos lo observan curiosos y el tercero
desvía la mirada); dos gendarmes
con cara de asustados; un fotógrafo
que aparece de espaldas, con tres cuartos del cuerpo
fuera de cuadro; y dos
oficiales que visten uniformes con galones:
uno mira a la cámara que le apunta el fotógrafo
mientras sostiene la cabeza inerte,
posando como un cazador con su trofeo;
el otro, que aparenta tener el mayor rango,
señala con el índice de su mano derecha
el lugar donde antes latía el corazón,
como si con su toque pudiera reanimarlo.
Con los ojos abiertos y la mirada clara,
el cuerpo pareciera querer incorporarse como un Lázaro
que volviese a la vida por un instante apenas,
para hundirse de nuevo, de inmediato,
en la muerte.
La lírica está muerta.
Y me imagino
lo que estarán diciendo quienes creían en ella
para justificarlo
(lo de siempre):
que no era ella la luz,
sino que había venido en testimonio de la luz;
que vino entre los suyos,
pero los suyos no la recibieron
Lo cierto es que fue así:
era de madrugada cuando la capturamos,
herida de un balazo en una pierna
luego de una emboscada que se había prolongado
del mediodía hasta muy tarde,
bien entrada la noche.
En esas condiciones, así y todo,
⎯aparte de la pierna, el asma le oprimía
los pulmones⎯, había persistido en el combate,
hasta que su fusil quedó inutilizado por completo
por un disparo que le destruyó el cañón;
además, la pistola que portaba tenía
el cargador vacío.
Trasladada al cuartel,
que era una escuela, al ser interrogada,
dijo que la belleza era paciencia
y nos habló del lirio ⎯pero ¿cómo
es un lirio?, yo acá nunca vi uno⎯,
y de cómo en el campo,
después de tantas noches bajo tierra,
del tallo verde a la corola blanca
irrumpe un día.
Pero por estas latitudes
todo crece en desorden, sin propósito,
y yo, que vine al mundo y me crié
salvajemente contra todo y a pesar de todo,
como el pasto que surge entre las grietas del asfalto
y que los coches pisan al pasar ⎯pero acá
no tenemos caminos asfaltados, y autos casi no hay⎯,
no la podía comprender, a ella que había nacido para todo,
un cálculo preciso de sus padres,
una inversión de cara hacia el futuro
⎯el tiempo para ella era una flecha que avanzaba con conciencia
hacia su conclusión, mientras que para mí era un ciclo regulado
no por la urgencia del deseo ni las sordas impresiones del instinto,
sino más bien por algo sagrado, aunque remoto⎯;
no podía entender que hubiera abandonado
lo que fuera que hubiese dejado atrás (¿la falta de propósito
de una existencia cómoda o tal vez el exceso
de determinación?) por venir a este páramo
en donde todo crece pero nada
abunda más que el hambre,
a dar vueltas en círculos y ver cómo caían uno a uno
los compañeros, en combate contra un adversario innumerable
pero infinitamente dividido, por la gloria
triunfante de una Idea: nosotros, que nacemos
en este rincón último,
en donde la naturaleza aún
existe separada de la voluntad del hombre,
aprendemos temprano en nuestras vidas que la libertad
no es cosa de este mundo, y que el amor
es acto y no potencia.
Pero no dije nada.
Después se hizo un silencio:
mientras la interrogábamos, nos había llegado
la orden de matarla. (Lo de las manos fue después de muerta,
pero yo no lo vi. Me contaron, incluso,
que habían ordenado cortarle la cabeza
y que alguien se negó).
Pasaron unas horas.
Un superior nos dijo que esperáramos
para ver si no había contraorden,
que no llegó (en la radio ya anunciaban su muerte).
Llegaba el mediodía. Había que matarla.
Y en cuanto al desenlace que tuvieron los hechos,
no es verdad lo que dicen: que no nos atrevíamos,
que nos emborracharon para darnos coraje,
y que ni así podíamos.
Nosotros simplemente
hicimos lo que nos habían ordenado;
entramos en el aula en donde la teníamos
y la matamos como se mata a un animal
para comer.
VI. Dr. Pedro Ara
…y así, después de aquella falsa alarma
de la anterior semana, iban pasando
los días sin que síntoma ninguno
viniera a marchitarme la esperanza
de que tal vez se hubieran olvidado
de mí, pero a las cinco de la tarde
de esa jornada histórica, llamaron
para avisarme que a las seis vendrían
a buscarme. Yo, contra mi costumbre
de ser siempre confiado en demasía,
resolví por primera vez actuar
con orden y cautela, y me dispuse
a redactar un borrador, con todas
las condiciones a exigir a cambio
de la tarea; por elemental
cortesía política, entre ellas
no se incluía la financiación.
En eso estaba, cuando aparecieron
el doctor y sus hombres, que llegaron
mucho después de lo anunciado. Hubo
un escueto intercambio de palabras:
la lírica, según mis visitantes,
agonizaba, y con seguridad
ya habría fallecido en el momento
en que llegásemos allá.
La radio
no había anunciado la noticia aún;
y, sin embargo, ya la policía
había acordonado toda el área
e interrumpido el tránsito. No obstante,
una gran multitud se iba reuniendo,
ante las verjas de la residencia
y en algunos jardines aledaños,
en silencio. En la noche del invierno,
arrodilladas en el suelo húmedo,
con velas encendidas en las manos,
rezaban las mujeres. Junto a ellas,
cientos o miles de hombres en silentes
grupos. Nadie sabía quiénes éramos;
pero, al ver que los guardias nos abrían
paso, nos preguntaban: “¿Es verdad
que la lírica ha muerto?”.
Proseguimos
sin contestarles, muy impresionados,
y penetramos en la residencia,
donde nos escoltaron a un salón.
Enseguida, llegó el Ministro y dijo:
“La lírica, a las ocho y veinticinco
de hoy, ha pasado a la inmortalidad.
El Presidente quiere que prepare
el cadáver, para exponerlo al pueblo,
y ser depositado en una cripta
monumental que hemos de construir”.
Luego de presentarle una objeción
–que sería tal vez más conveniente
encargarle el trabajo a algún experto
del país–, que me fue desestimada,
le entregué el borrador de condiciones
–aunque sin mencionar las económicas–,
y el Ministro volvió en pocos minutos
con la conformidad presidencial.
No había tiempo que perder: muy pronto
reuní los elementos necesarios;
el problema de hallar un ayudante
era de más difícil solución:
por suerte me acordé de un compatriota,
sencillo, honrado y fuerte, acostumbrado
a la labor forense. No fue fácil
encontrarlo; vivía en un barrio extremo
y oscuro, por el cual di muchas vueltas
entre baches y charcos con mi coche,
hasta acertar. No le conté qué haríamos
ni dónde. Pero le hice prometer
que lo que aquella noche oyera o viese
no lo hablaría ni con su familia.
De camino, compramos unas cosas
más, y pronto llegamos a la casa
presidencial. Mi amigo no cabía
en su sorpresa al ver que el Presidente
le tendía la mano y lo abrazaba.
Entramos en la cámara mortuoria
los dos juntos. Dormía sobre el lecho
para siempre el espectro de una rara
y tranquila belleza, libre, al fin,
de la materia con su cruel tormento,
corroída hasta el límite. La ciencia
la había sometido a una tortura
mental, con la esperanza del milagro,
prolongando el suplicio. Junto a ella
se encontraba su médico, que al verme
se dispuso a salir. Un sacerdote
a los pies de la muerta, y otros médicos,
la familia cercana y los amigos,
rezaban en voz alta. La primera
en levantarse fue la madre, que
juntó las manos, me miró en un gesto
como de súplica y salió apoyándose
en sus hijos; y pronto la siguieron
los otros, y al final el sacerdote,
que me dijo al pasar: “¡Dios le ilumine!”
Y nos quedamos solos en la estancia.
Yacente ante nosotros, consumida
hasta el extremo de lo imaginable,
se hallaba la mujer más admirada,
temida, amada, odiada de su tiempo.
Había combatido con fiereza
contra los grandes y ahí estaba ahora,
derrotada por lo infinitamente
pequeño. Pero no debió temer
la muerte: la esperó como esperamos
a un huésped recibido sin sorpresa.
¿Se preparó a morir desde los días
rosas de su apogeo? ¿A quién pensaba
que encontraría en la otra orilla? Yo
apenas sé que en la otra orilla está
la Historia, a la que no cualquiera llega…
VII. Harún al-Rashid
La lírica está muerta.
Cuentan que,
exasperada por la complacencia
de sus visires, chambelanes, alcahuetes y edecanes,
de los chongos dotados del harén y los eunucos,
solía salir de noche, sin custodia, disfrazada
de mendiga (¿o era de comerciante?),
a recorrer los últimos barrios de la ciudad
para saber lo que en verdad pensaban
sus súbditos de ella.
Una noche en que hervían el calor
y el insomnio, y soplaban, abrasivas, unas ráfagas
de polvo del desierto, se vistió, como tantas otras veces,
con sus patillas falsas y sus greñas cosméticas,
y salió del palacio de la cúpula verde y la puerta de oro
sin ser notada.
Fueron
quedando atrás los altos minaretes
ahora silenciosos, el cuartel de la guardia, las plazas y los parques
y las tiendas a oscuras del mercado,
hasta que al fin traspuso las murallas circulares,
con la tácita anuencia de un sereno
dormido.
Una vez fuera de la ciudadela,
una brisa del río, pestilente,
la recibió golpeándola en la cara;
caminó por las anchas avenidas
donde rugía el tráfico nocturno,
y siguiendo una arteria lateral,
vino a parar a un callejón mugriento,
rodeada de borrachos que tosían
dormidos, entre pilas de cartón
mojado por la orina de los perros
y la lluvia grasosa.
De repente,
oyó un grito, seguido del estruendo
de un objeto golpeando contra el piso
y unos pasos cercanos.
Asustada,
corrió sin rumbo fijo, hasta que dio
con la presencia tranquilizadora
de las vías del tren, que ocultó, luego,
un vasto laberinto de containers
a la altura del puerto; y continuó
bordeando el paredón perimetral,
y retomó el camino tantas veces
recorrido.
Enseguida divisó
la autopista y los pocos edificios
que en ese asentamiento se atrevían
a alzarse sobre el suelo.
Al acercarse,
y ver la calle principal de tierra,
las casuchas precarias de ladrillo
y chapas de desguace, y el trazado
de pasillos oscuros, sintió miedo;
pero los dientes se le hacían agua,
y atravesó los pasadizos sórdidos
hasta la puerta conocida.
Adentro
volvió a darse la escena consabida:
tras cruzar la primera habitación
donde una chica amamantaba a un hijo
y los otros dormían en el suelo,
entró al cuarto de atrás. Los mismos hombres
de mirada perdida se aburrían
frente al televisor. Todo fue casi
igual que siempre; y ya estaba por irse
apretando en el puño las bolsitas,
pero uno de los hombres, esta vez,
al contar los billetes, extrañado
y divertido, reparó en la efigie
impresa en el papel, que repetía
las facciones de aquel cliente asiduo:
soltó una carcajada, y tras mostrársela
a los otros, que rieron, disparó.
La lírica está muerta. Ya no existe
el califato, hundido entre sus vicios;
pero, ¿cuántos añoran sin saberlo
sus oropeles, su esplendor barato,
la eterna adolescencia del espíritu?
VIII. Las ropas nuevas
La lírica está muerta. De vergüenza.
La historia la conoce todo el mundo:
a la ciudad llegaron unos hombres,
que eran, según dijeron, grandes sastres,
y, tras pedirle audiencia, le ofrecieron
coserle un traje con un paño, único
por su delicadeza y hermosura,
que sería invisible, sin embargo,
a todo aquel que en realidad no fuera
hijo del padre que creía ser.
Entusiasmada con la perspectiva
de desenmascarar a los bastardos
y asegurarse la pureza étnica
de sus dominios, se mostró de acuerdo.
Ordenó que les dieran un palacio
y la plata y el oro que pidiesen.
Los hombres instalaron sus telares,
y daban a entender que todo el día
tejían en el paño; y uno de ellos
luego de un tiempo fue a anunciar que el traje,
que ya estaba empezado, era la cosa
más hermosa del mundo. Para verlo
la soberana despachó a un acólito,
su camarero personal, que dijo
haberlo visto, y confirmó las señas
que habían dado de él sus fabricantes,
por miedo de que su linaje fuese
puesto en tela de juicio. Luego, otro
súbdito fue enviado ante los sastres
para fiscalizar su actividad,
y luego otro, y otro; y cada uno
corroboraba las versiones previas.
Hasta que vino una gran fiesta, y todos
le reclamaron a su soberana
que estrenase el vestido. En el palacio
se presentaron los expertos sastres
con los paños cortados y cosidos
para vestir a la monarca. Pronto
se hubo cumplimentado la labor
y partió a la ciudad la soberana
para el desfile. Al ser verano, el traje
le sentaba muy cómodo. Enseguida
hizo su aparición ante las masas
congregadas.
La lírica está muerta
de vergüenza: en la ingle oculta un tímido
badajo, un ramillete tembloroso
comido por las moscas, todo envuelto
en el ligero celofán del aire;
y nadie, mientras ríe, la señala.
IX. Sibila de Cumas
La lírica está muerta,
pero la última vez que fui a tomarle el pulso
todavía vivía:
confinada a una cárcel de hojalata y alambre
(¿o era un bidón de plástico? –la verdad, no me acuerdo–),
pendía de los cables de una torre
de alta tensión en un suburbio humilde.
Cada vez más anciana, astrosa y encorvada,
era pasto de piojos y palomas, y los chicos del barrio
jugaban a golpear con la pelota los barrotes,
complaciéndose en ver cómo perdía el equilibrio;
y cuando se cansaban le decían:
“¿Qué querés? Pero, ¿qué es lo que querés?”
Y respondía ella: “¿Yo…? Morirme, quiero”.
X. Muerte de Orfeo
La lírica está muerta. Eso es un hecho
incontestable. Pero, en rigor de verdad,
y si sirviere de consuelo a alguien,
en su final estaba su principio.
Mientras que con su canto
arrastraba los bosques tras de sí, guiaba en procesión los animales,
y hacía que las rocas la siguieran, ocurrió que unos hombres,
ebrios por el licor vertido y el deseo no libado, la divisan desde el borde
de un promontorio, al tiempo que tañía la lira,
acompañando sus canciones. Y uno,
desarreglados los cabellos por la suave brisa, “Ahí,
ahí está”, exclama, “la que nos desairó”,
y apuntando a la boca abierta en pleno canto, le dispara una rama
que por estar cubierta de follaje
deja una marca sin herida. El arma
de otro es una piedra, que lanzada en el aire es derrotada
por el concierto de la voz y de la lira,
para caer al fin ante sus pies, como si le pidiera
perdón por semejante atrevimiento.
Es entonces que toda moderación se pierde
y estalla, temeraria, la violencia,
porque sus proyectiles, amansados por el canto
se habrían detenido, inofensivos, en mitad del aire,
si el estruendo de palmas, cornetas y tambores
y su ulular frenético no hubiesen sofocado el sonido de la cítara:
las piedras, al no oírla ya (dichosas ellas porque ahora
no sentían) se sonrojaron con su sangre.
Pero en primer lugar, la privan del sinfín
de aves encantadas por su voz, de las serpientes
y el tropel de animales, galardón de su triunfo.
Finalmente, se vuelven contra ella, con las manos
rezumantes de sangre, y la persiguen
arrojándole tirsos verdecidos de guirnaldas,
hechos para otro fin. Unos lanzan terrones,
otros le avientan ramas arrancadas a algún árbol,
otros le tiran rocas; y no faltan
armas a su furor, porque unos bueyes
sometían los campos al arado,
y no lejos de allí había unos labriegos que cavaban la tierra
para ganar, con el sudor, su fruto,
que al ver la multitud enardecida
huyen, dejando atrás sus herramientas de trabajo:
yacen desperdigadas por los campos vacíos
palas, largos rastrillos y pesados azadones.
Munidos de esas armas, se entretienen
primero con los bueyes, haciéndolos pedazos,
y luego se apresuran al plato principal:
sacrílegos, despojan de la luz a quien tendía
las manos, suplicante, y por primera vez
pronunciaba palabras sin efecto,
sin poder conmoverlos con su voz.
Por esa misma boca, que escucharon las piedras
y hasta los animales supieron comprender,
al expirar, el alma se encamina de regreso hacia los vientos.
¡Y cómo te lloraron las aves sin consuelo,
la turba de las fieras, y hasta las duras rocas y los bosques,
que tan frecuentemente se plegaran
a tu canto! Los árboles, apenas sensitivos,
te lloraron, dejando caer su cabellera tonsurada
como señal de duelo. Incluso dicen
que a causa de las lágrimas
los ríos aumentaron su caudal. Sus miembros
yacen diseminados en diversos sitios;
la cabeza y la lira, casualmente
juntas, vienen a dar a un río de la zona;
ése es el escenario del prodigio:
mientras corriente abajo se deslizan
por el medio del río, rumbo al mar,
exánime, la lengua todavía murmura, lacrimosa;
responden, lacrimosas, las orillas,
y la lira, sin mano que la pulse,
se queda balbuciendo un no se qué.
XI. Sodoma y Gomorra
La lírica está muerta.
Y aunque muchas
veces le pedí a Dios que la matase
y terminara con mis sufrimientos,
ahora la recuerdo con nostalgia
agridulce.
Fue hace ya muchos años:
harto del ajetreo de la urbe,
huí de la Capital con mi familia
a un pueblito perdido en la mitad
de la llanura.
Los primeros meses
transcurrieron felices, sin apuros,
entre el aburrimiento del trabajo,
la vida familiar y las continuas
siestas.
Los fines de semana íbamos
a la tarde a dar vueltas a la plaza
y a saludar con la cabeza siempre
a aquellas mismas caras somnolientas,
cuyos ojos se iluminaban sólo
si alguien contaba un chisme con malicia
trivial.
Mis hijos, los varones, fueron
los primeros –como era predecible–
en habituarse a aquella vida: pronto
trabaron amistad con los locales,
mezclándose hasta casi confundirse
con ellos, entre charlas de cerveza,
fútbol, autos, mujeres. A los otros
–mi mujer y mis hijas, y yo mismo–
nos costó un poco más aclimatarnos,
a pesar de que el tiempo era benigno,
con excepción de la humedad.
De todas
formas, la placidez de aquellos días
tendría que acabar tarde o temprano:
a comienzos de otoño me di cuenta
de que, tras la cansina sencillez
de aquellos pajueranos, se ocultaba
una perversidad que no quisiera
verme obligado a detallar.
Así
fue que empezaron los recelos mutuos;
sólo de nuestra parte en un comienzo,
pero ellos no tardaron demasiado
en percibirlo: un sesgo en la sonrisa,
un bajar con apuro la mirada
al saludar.
Conforme avanzó el año
y los días se hicieron cada vez
más cortos, la tensión fue incrementándose,
aunque recién se manifestaría
de forma abierta en el invierno.
Fue
una noche muy fría. Casualmente
habían venido desde la ciudad
unos parientes de visita. Estábamos
sentados a la mesa, compartiendo
la carne, el pan y el vino, y de repente
tocaron a la puerta: cuando abrimos,
ya todo el pueblo se encontraba afuera,
reunido frente a nuestra entrada. Entonces
uno de los vecinos, que era el líder,
en apariencia al menos, de esa turba
enardecida, dijo:
“¿Dónde están
los que vinieron esta noche a verlos?
Sáquenlos para que los conozcamos”.
Salí, cerrando tras de mí la puerta,
y les rogué que por favor se fuesen,
pero ellos se burlaron:
“¿Te pensabas
que podías venir de la ciudad
a decirnos qué hacer?”.
Cuando advirtieron
que mis esfuerzos eran infructuosos,
mis hijas se asomaron a la puerta
y, a cambio de que no nos molestaran,
les ofrecieron ir con ellos, pero
tampoco así pudieron persuadirlos.
Mis parientes, entonces, alargaron
la mano desde adentro y, tras meterme
en la casa otra vez, cerraron bien
la puerta.
Afuera, mientras, los del pueblo
intentaban echarla abajo; y otros,
tomados de las rejas que guardaban
las ventanas, hacían morisquetas
y gestos de amenaza; y nos habrían
hecho sus prisioneros, o quizá
algo peor, de no haber sucedido
lo inesperado:
un sol de medianoche
de repente se alzó por la llanura
y se hizo de día. Encandilados,
los del pueblo cesaron un instante
en su violencia; entonces, una lluvia
ligera comenzó a caer del cielo,
y desde adentro vimos que la gente
levantaba las manos recibiéndola
con alegría, y que iban, una a una,
quitándose las prendas que llevaban
puestas.
Así, los hombres con el torso
desnudo y las mujeres en corpiño
se pusieron de súbito a bailar
a pesar de la lluvia que arreciaba,
aunque no había música. El vapor
iba empañando las ventanas más
y más, hasta que al fin no se veía
ya nada desde el interior. La luz
pareció hacerse más intensa afuera
y sentimos de pronto que el calor
iba aumentando cada vez más rápido:
veíamos correr por los cristales,
ahora turbios, unos goterones,
y el sudor nos cubría todo el cuerpo;
mientras tanto, la lluvia retumbaba
y hacía imposible que cualquier sonido
del exterior llegara hasta nosotros.
Eso duró una hora u hora y media.
Después sentimos que el calor bajaba
y de repente se apagó la luz.
Con timidez abrí la puerta; un viento
helado me golpeó. Busqué un abrigo
y salí hacia la noche, iluminada
apenas por la luna: en el lugar
donde hace instantes se erigiera un pueblo,
veía ahora un campo de cenizas
y el suelo mismo despedía un vaho
vagamente dulzón.
Sin más demora
reuní a mis familiares y emprendimos
la marcha, sin saber muy bien adónde;
una vez que dejamos finalmente
atrás ese perímetro arrasado
que había sido el pueblo, mi mujer
se dio vuelta a mirar y, con los ojos
llorosos y la voz casi quebrada,
me dijo:
“El humo sube de la tierra
como el humo de un horno”.
Al verla rígida,
yo le tiré con fuerza de la mano
para obligarla a reaccionar.
En breve
llegamos a la ruta y la seguimos,
caminando durante varias horas,
hasta que divisamos el cartel
precariamente iluminado de una
estación de servicio. Desde ahí
llamamos por teléfono pidiéndoles
auxilio a otros parientes, que llegaron
al mediodía a rescatarnos; luego
iniciamos la vuelta a la ciudad,
de donde nunca más nos volveríamos
a mover.
Pasó el tiempo. Y con su paso,
el hábito
fue haciendo su tarea: pronto el resentimiento
por el horror pasado se transformó en olvido,
y el olvido cedió ante el trabajo diario
de desear lo que falta, en que se consumieron
mis días.
Sin embargo, ahora muchas veces
me despierta de noche la sospecha angustiosa
de que los habitantes de aquel lugar actuaban
en nombre de un amor exactamente igual
al mío, y me carcome por dentro la certeza
de que todo fue en vano:
renegar
de los otros y de nosotros mismos,
para seguir viviendo
igual que siempre,
igual
que en todas partes.
XII. La matanza de los pretendientes
La lírica está muerta. O eso dicen:
que hace ya veinte años que está ausente,
que sus huesos se pudren en la tierra
o que el mar los arrastra con su oleaje,
mientras los pretendientes de su esposa
se devoran su hacienda.
Pero vive,
y está siempre volviendo. En este instante,
sola en su barca en medio del océano,
relee con insistencia aquel poema
célebre de Kavafis (me pregunto:
¿logrará persuadir a quien en una
época se jactaba de su ingenio
–“la fecunda en ardides”, la llamaban–
la idea remanida de que el viaje
está en el interior de cada uno?)
y sueña con el día en que retorne
al hogar, disfrazada de mendiga,
y aguante con orgullo, estoicamente,
los insultos, los golpes y vejámenes
de los que aspiran a usurpar su trono.
Sueña despierta con el hijo único,
su legítima sangre, e imagina
el reencuentro emotivo en esa choza
bucólica, con música de fondo,
debidamente lacrimosa. Trama
ya la alianza de clases con la plebe,
en la que afianzará su reconquista
del poder. Y ya puede verse, casi,
yaciendo con su esposa, en aquel lecho
que con sus propias manos construyera
en un tronco de olivo. Sin embargo,
la escena que proyecta una y otra
vez en su mente es congregar a todos
en el patio, alegando alguna excusa,
cerrados previamente los accesos;
y con la sola ayuda de su hijo
y de los pocos servidores fieles
que le quedan, mostrarles quién es ella
a esos usurpadores, y matarlos,
y matarlos a todos: se imagina
con lujo de detalles, con lujuria,
revolverle las tripas con la espada
a un enemigo; acribillarle a otro
el cuerpo entero con sus proyectiles;
y el corazón de otro palpitante
aún en su puño, luego de arrancárselo.
Pero un reflujo corrosivo asciende
por sus entrañas y le explota súbito
en la garganta y la nariz, y rompe
aquella ensoñación triunfal. Molesta,
sacude la cabeza, inspira hondo,
se tranquiliza al fin y mira al frente
y ve que sigue en medio del océano,
que no hay tierra a la vista y, resignada,
toma otra vez los remos y hace fuerza.
XIII. De la guerra civil
La lírica está muerta. Finalmente.
Ha llegado el momento que esperábamos todos.
Ya podemos decirlo sin ambages:
es el fin de una era. El magno orden de los siglos
se vuelve a barajar en fundación renovada.
Nace un niño de hierro para la poesía,
y con su advenimiento, tras dimitir la vieja estirpe de oro,
se alzará en su lugar una progenie
férrea: de todos modos, ya va siendo hora
de que empecemos a cantar
cosas más importantes.
Nace un niño de hierro
para la poesía, y una única incógnita ensombrece el horizonte:
¿conocerá a sus padres sonriendo con dulzura?
¿Les soltará una carcajada amarga?
¿Los verá con desprecio? ¿Con sospecha? Acaso,
lo que es peor: ¿les pagará la vida y su sostén
con una mueca apática?
La lírica
está muerta. Así es, aunque su muerte
–mal que les pese a aquellos
que hoy se la adjudican– fue sin ceremonia: como cae un árbol,
tronco sin nombre en la mitad del bosque
por donde nadie pasa,
así cayó. La técnica también estuvo ausente:
ni siquiera las tablas precarias de la cruz,
los clavos enmohecidos, la corona trenzada con agujas,
el paño avinagrado que alguna vez urdiera
con módica pericia mano de hombre,
tuvieron parte en el asunto,
que ocurrió sin testigos, sin castigo ejemplar,
sin demasiada premeditación
ni marca.
Está muerta. Así es.
Y un acerbo destino arrastra a los poetas
y el crimen de la muerte fraternal,
desde el momento en que se derramó en la tierra,
como una maldición para sus descendientes,
su sangre:
fue en un descampado; el golpe
la sorprendió de espaldas.
Está muerta.
La lírica está muerta.
No murió como Cristo, la mataron
como a Abel.
[1] The statement that gives the book its title was uttered by Alejandro Rubio in the anthology Monstruos (2001), compiled by Arturo Carrera, which collects, among others, the most conspicuous Argentine poets of the 1990s: “Lyric poetry is dead. Who has time, when there’s cable television and FM, to listen to a heartbroken youth play the lute?”
– …with all the human senses spent: This line paraphrases the final stanza of Coplas por la muerte de su padre by Jorge Manrique.
– …and an imposter came to dictate a false will: Reference to Gianni Schicchi, character from Canto XXX of Dante’s Inferno.
[2] “El matadero” (“The Slaughterhouse”), by Esteban Echeverría, is one of Argentine literature’s foundational texts. It narrates the capture, (implied) rape, and death of a young aristocrat with cosmopolitan ideals, which occurs in a slaughterhouse in the slums of Buenos Aires at the hands of a mob, followers of Juan Manuel de Rosas, who governed the province with an iron fist.
– …it wasn’t Brecht / who wrote that poem: Cites a sermon by the pastor Martin Niemöller, addressed to the German intelligentsia during the Nazi era, admonishing them for their passivity in response to the atrocities committed by the regime. It’s important to mention that Niemöller himself was a supporter of Nazism at its onset. The sermon has often been confused with a poem that, in turn, tends to be attributed erroneously to Bertolt Brecht.
– …a refrigerated truck: Alludes to the film Carne (1968), directed by Armando Bo, starring Isabel Sarli, the first diva of Argentine soft-core porn.
– …the gem-like moon: Cites the story “El niño proletario,” by Osvaldo Lamborghini, a retelling of “El matadero.”
[3] Alfredo Yabrán was an Argentine postal businessman suspected to be the front man of a mafia-type organization with international scope. Completely unknown to the public, he gained notoriety in the 1990s when he was linked to the death of the photographer José Luis Cabezas, the only one who had succeeded in photographing him. Identified as the mastermind of the Cabezas crime, Yabrán committed suicide in one of his country estates. To this day, many people in Argentina still believe that the businessman faked his own death, and numerous hare-brained theories have been concocted about his current whereabouts.
– …Don’t you forget it: The media launched a campaign to honor the memory of José Luis Cabezas; its slogan was “No se olviden de Cabezas” (“Don’t forget Cabezas”).
[4] Based on forensic reports and academic literature, the poem refers to the desecration, which occurred in 1987 and was never cleared up, of the body of three-time Argentine president Juan Domingo Perón, who, through his movement – Justicialism or Peronsim – profoundly and definitively changed the means of doing and understanding politics in Argentina.
– …”your hand / of love draws near / like snow-white butterflies”: These lines were part of a poem – a chillingly prophetic one – that Perón’s widow, Isabel Martínez de Perón, left in her husband’s tomb.
[5] The poem centers on two main elements: the famous photo of the dead Che, in which he appears with his eyes open and looks as if he’s going to rise up, taken by Freddy Alborta and sold to United Press International; and the poem “Lázaro” by the Spanish poet Luis Cernuda. The text’s evidence base includes the Diario del Che en Bolivia.
– …that she was not herself the light…and yet her own did not receive her: Quotes from the Gospel of John (John. 1:7 and 1:11).
– …and spoke of lilies…which…break through one day / from straight green stalk to white corolla: Cernuda writes: “Sé que el lirio del campo / Tras de su humilde oscuridad en tantas noches / Con larga espera bajo tierra / Del tallo verde erguido a la corola alba / irrumpe un día en gloria triunfante” (“I realize that the lily of the field, / after its humble darkness all those nights, / its long wait underground, / from straight green stalk to white corolla, / breaks through one day in a triumphant glory”).
– …the instinct’s deaf impressions: A quote from the Argentine politician Valentín Alsina (1802-1869) in his Notas al libro Civilización y Barbarie. Alsina had had to go into exile during the administration of Juan Manuel de las Rosas; his book is a study of Facundo, another foundational text of Argentine literature, written by the writer and ex-president Domingo Faustino Sarmiento.
– …for the triumphant glory: Another quote from “Lázaro” by Luis Cernuda.
– …Whatever happened to her hands / was after she had died: Just like Perón’s corpse twenty years later, the lifeless body of Ernesto Guevara, which later disappeared, suffered the amputation of its hands.
[6] The poem is a versification (in hendecasyllables in the Spanish original) of a passage from the book El caso de Eva Perón, by Dr. Pedro Ara, the Spanish doctor who embalmed Eva Perón. Apart from the changes required by the meter, the only alteration is the substitution of Eva’s name with Lyric Poetry, consistent with the personification technique governing the book.
[7] From 1989 to 1990, in line with the dictates of the consensus in Washington that inspired, in Latin America during the 1990s, the neoliberal presidencies of Fernando Color de Mello, Carlos Salinas de Gotari, Carlos Andrés Pérez, and others, Argentina was governed by Carlos Saúl Menem, a leader of populist origins who rapidly allied himself with the corporate and financial establishment. The frivolization of political and cultural life, the perception of widespread corruption, the total impunity of his officials, and the atmosphere of waste and ostentatious vulgarity were some of his management’s distinguishing features. His detractors often reproached his “oriental extravagance”: Menem was of Syrian descent and, people said, had abandoned the Muslim faith in order to aspire to the presidency. This poem, inspired by the famous story in A Thousand and One Nights that narrates the caliph Harun al-Rashid’s nocturnal excursions, in disguise, around Baghdad, begins there and then passes into an imaginary Buenos Aires, traversing the city from the Plaza de Mayo, through Retiro, and into the settlement known as Villa (Slum) 31.
[8] A version of the famous story “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” as told in El Conde Lucanor by Don Juan Manuel.
[9] This poem recounts the myth of Sibyl of Cumae, Apollo’s priestess of the oracle in that city, who conveyed the god’s prophecies in verse. According to the version of the myth related by Ovid, Apollo had offered to grant her a wish, and she had taken up a handful of sand and asked to live as many years as the number of grains she held in her fist. He agreed, also offering to grant her eternal youth in exchange for her virginity. When she refused, she was condemned to a life of eternal decline and aging.
– …or was it actually a plastic jar?…”What do you want? But, really, what is it you want?” / And she’d respond, “I…I? I want to die”: According to Petronius’s Satyricon, the Sibyl, made smaller by her extreme old age, was hung inside a bottle, and children asked her, “Sibyl, what do you want?” And she answered, “I want to die.” The same quote appears at the beginning of The Waste Land, T.S. Eliot’s famous poem.
[10] This poem is a barely modified translation of the first 53 hexameters of book XI of Ovid’s Metamorphosis.
– …in / her end was her beginning: Quote from “East Coker,” one of Eliot’s Four Quartets.
– …and happy were those / who felt no more: Quote from “Lo fatal,” a poem by the famous Nicaraguan Modernist Rubén Darío.
– …that barely feel: Quote from the same poem by Rubén Darío.
– …babbling its baleful bits of ballad: Based on a line from St. John of the Cross’s “Spiritual Canticle” (“un no sé qué que quedan balbuciendo”), whose alliterations were possibly inspired by those present in the line by Ovid (nescio quid quaerit) translated here.
[11] The poem updates the biblical episode of the same name, setting it in a small town in the province of Buenos Aires.
– ”The smoke is rising from the ground / as from an oven”: Gen. 19:28.
[12] A version of the homonymous episode in Homer’s Odyssey.
– …Kafavis’s / beloved poem: Refers to “Ithaca,” the great Greek poet’s only work to transcend the poetic genre and become a model of self-help literature.
– …the alliance with the masses: Quote from Juan Domingo Perón.
[13] This poem, which develops the mythological theme of brotherly rivalries, centers on two texts from the Latin tradition: Virgil’s Eclogue IV, which Christian posterity interpreted as a sign of Christ’s coming, and Horace’s Epode VII, also about fratricide, which concludes with the image of Remus’s blood, having been murdered by Romulus.