Poems of the Double

Painting by Emil Kazuz


Poems of the Double


Translation from Spanish by Jerome Rothenberg

1
I grabbed my face
and brought it to the mirror

Searched my eyes
but did not know them

Observed my gestures
weak from terror

He was frightened
of my self

2
You walk at night alone
your own self's equal

counting out your hearbeats
in the windows' faded wings

on turning around a corner
a man tears off your face

beheaded you remain
at the foot of your own shadow

while someone in the distance
looks at you through your eyes

3
your hands a pair of crows
in the other’s pockets

sufferings unseen
in a deaf man's ear

but don't believe that it was you
sorrows rich dust dispossessed

in any nook of day
you also become dark

4
The years like crows’ feet
pass from me to you

my tears do not stop falling
rolling down your cheeks

only a breath dividing
mirror & reflection

5
in a corner of the window
memories are breaking up
beneath the old bed
teenaged girls are sleeping
broken is desire's jug
tablecloth soaked through
& in the picture's upper part
tears falling without eyes

6
I closed the door & waited for my double
but instead of the expected face
a macaw burst forth from the white wall
the color of red fire.

Like an arrow tipped in blue
- hyacinth hallucination -
a parrot with yellow eyes
landed on the table.

The Kandinskys then arrived
wings spread wide & blue
belly orange, head in purple
their throats a breathless J.

A melody of greens
the undisputed parrot came,
its chest, its beak, its neck,
its head & all in green.

Not a single one needed to show
credentials of who he was. There was
a congress of parrots in my mind.
They were going to pick the most handsome.

They began to discuss the value
of begreen, waxgreen, fieldgreen,
bluegreen, cardinalgreen, lividgreen.

In view of all such circumstances
I postponed until the next day
the encounter with my double.

7
I opened his eyes
saw
my living darkness

is there a boatman anywhere
able to shift the light
from limit unto limit?

yes
or
no?

8
Beyond you
I do not exist not even I
there is no definite horizon
nor hands to touch the light

all being is a surface
a place a stone that's all

Beyond me
you do not exist not even you

9
to breathe out the ghost
is the task of the living

to drink memories
from eyes
is the role of the dead

in my mouth today
we break
the bread of illusion

10
one hour
hurls shadows
onto another

one butterfly wing
is setting
at my eyes’ horizons

when the double has vanished
at the end of the road
all blackness is mine

Mexico, Saturday-Sunday 6-7-8 of March 1999


Homero Aridjis

Posted over on Poems & Poetics