Scourer

With the roughness of a green scouring pad, green like a meadow, I scour, while my jaw tries to grip your name inside my cranial cavity, which is already full of names, and on top of the names, stones, and on top of the stones, continents, and on top of the continents, the necropolis of stars, when an intense rain clears everything away and wets my lips so that I speak and I speak and I speak. And no more keeping quiet.

So I scour, I scrub until I bleed and from my blood are born rocks with a heart locked inside. And from my mouth a name falls out that rolls to where horses lick the shadows of birds that cannot fly.

Fregall

Amb l’aspresa del fregall de color verd, com un Prat verd rasco, mentre intento amb la mandíbula serrar el teu nom dins de la cavitat cranial, que ja n’és plena, de noms, i sobre els noms les pedres, i sobre les pedres els continents, i sobre els continents les necròpolis dels astres, quan una pluja intensa ho esborra i em llepa els llavis perquè digui i digui i digui. I no calli més.

Així que rasco, frego fins que em faig sang i de la sang en neixen roques amb un cor clos al dedins. I de la boca em cau un nom que rodola fins allí on els cavalls llepen l’ombra dels ocells que no poden volar.

Raven's Vision

They no longer are. The ones drowned in the river, the jumpers out of windows, those who chose the bridges, or the wooden rafters, they made a discovery, they made an agreement, they made a wish, they drowned themselves there.
Spend your life eating the dead to become the dead.
To be a stomach.
The children who don’t finish being born, torn from the intestines, separated from the intestinal mouth that fed them, they are.

With a beak full of mud, the raven flies with a small worm in its mouth. Over a green and immense meadow, alongside a mountain, and a blue sky of immense blue. The worm trembles. The raven rises. The worm rises. The raven trembles. The worm says mother. The raven says earth. The worm says heaven. I say eyes. I say food and life. I say beauty.
He doesn’t anymore. They don’t anymore. They made an
agreement. They are illuminated in blue.

Visió del Corb

Ells ja no, els ofegats al riu, els saltadors de finestres, els qui escolliren els ponts, o les bigues de fusta, ells van fer un descobriment, van coincidir, van desitjar, s’hi van negar.
Passar la vida menjant morts per arribar a ser un mort.
Ser ventre.
Els nens que no acaben de néixer, arrencats del budell, separats de la boca intestina que els alimentava, en són.

Amb el bec ple de fang surt volant el corb amb un cuc petit a la boca. Sobre un prat verd i immens, muntanyenc, i un cel blau d’un blau d’immensitat. El cuc tremola. El corb s’eleva. El cuc s’eleva. El corb tremola. El cuc diu mare. El corb diu terra. El cuc diu cel. Jo dic ulls. Jo dic aliment i vida. Jo dic bellesa.
Ell ja no. Ells ja no. Van coincidir. S’il·luminen de blau.

The Pink Plastic Glove

A pink plastic glove arrives, I say hello pink plastic glove, you have come. If you have come it is because someone has sent you, someone who knows the price of bread and milk and useful things. Someone who thinks of me and sends you. Someone who thinks: a dead man has been found in the sink, someone who knows what life can be. Someone who understands what my life is already. An exceptional being. A being who has not gone to any school. A being who thinks of me and who knows that what I need is not a Bible, not a register or an electoral list or a wedding list, but a pink plastic glove. Not a signifier but a glove. Not a signifier but a Rose. The pink tutu over the slender, muscular legs of the swan ballerina of the Moscow ballet. [*] And above all the idea of getting inside the glove. The armour of the glove. The soul entering into the glove and the body entering into the soul. If this someone knows the way out, he should say so. Say, for example, you walk straight ahead and you turn three hundred light years to the right and then you move to the north pole of the first magnitude magnetized, and there you cross through the kitchen door, you take the apron, the scouring brush, the mask of Santa Ana de Teloxtoc [**] where you can still see the nose, the parts of the mouth and the jaw. And you start the ritual. As the kings and priests of ancient times did, you begin with a vestal virgin watching you, you begin it.

* Swan ballerina… (l. 11) is probably a popular reference to Swan Lake, a ballet composed by Pyotr Tchaikovsky in 1875/1876 and first performed at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow the following year. The original two-act enactment of the tale about Odette, turned into a swan by an evil curse, was subsequently extended choreographically by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov and musically by Riccardo Drigo in 1895 (including a Spanish dance in its third act) and has since remained in the repertoire, especially after the Ballets Russes production in London 1911.
** The mask of Santa Ana de Teloxtoc (ll. 17-18) appears to be a reference to wooden masks inlaid with turquoise mosaics discovered in the cave of Saint Anne of Teloxtoc, Puebla (Mexico) in 1986. Santa Anna (Saint Anne), according to the apocryphal Gospel of James (145± A.D.), was the mother of Maria (the Virgin Mary) and hence the grandmother of Jesus. Despite being formally rejected under the papacy of Gelasius I at Rome (492-496 A.D.), its popularity and dissemination remained.

El Guant de Plàstic Rosa

Arriba un guant de plàstic Rosa, li dic hola guant de plàstic Rosa, has vingut. Si véns és que algú t’envia, algú que sap el preu del pa i de la llet i coses útils. Algú que pensa en mi i t’envia. Algú que pensa: s’ha trobat un mort dins de l’aigüera, algú que sap el que pot ser la vida. Algú que entén el que és ja la meva vida. Un ésser excepcional. Un ésser que no ha nat a cap escola. Un ésser que pensa en mi i que sap que allò que necessito no és una Bíblia, no és un cadastre o un llistat electoral o una llista de noces, sinó un guant de plàstic rosa. No un significant sinó un guant. No un significant sinó un Rosa. El tutú rosa sobre les cames esveltes i musculades de la ballarina-cigne del ballet de Moscú. I sobretot la idea d’introduir-se dins del guant. La cuirassa del guant. L’ànima entrant dins el guant i el cos entrant dins l’ànima. Si aquest algú sap la sortida que la digui. Que digui per exemple, camines tot recte i torces als tres-cents anys llum a la dreta i després et desplaces cap al pol nord de la primera magnitud imantada, i allí davant traspasses la porta de la cuina, agafes el davantal, el fregall, la màscara de Santa Anna de Teloxtoc on encara s’aprecien el nas, parts de la boca i la mandíbula. I comences el ritual. Com feien els reis i els sacerdots de l’antiguitat el comences, amb una vestal mirant-te, el comences.

Dimensions

How much is zero multiplied by infinity? And love multiplied by zero? And Death divided by infinity? How much are you and I multiplied by you and me? How much is life plus one? How many of us are you minus me? Try as you might, if you open the door, you never open the door. It's the language that opens it for you. I just enter. There is no door. It's like a hand. That's it. There is no hand. It’s a word like a sign for streets and borders. I just enter. The finite instant of my infinite enters you. When you are not here. In this way of yours of not being here. In this infinite way of yours of not being here. You do not try. You're not here. Mathematicians have not yet been created. The sky is full of angels. The stomach rules. Forget about brains. Surely tomorrow it will snow. The day has no window.

Dimensions

¿Quant és zero multiplicar per infinit? ¿I amor multiplicat per zero? ¿I Mort dividida per infinit?¿Quants som tu I jo multiplicats per tu i per jo? ¿Quant és la vida més u? ¿Quants som tu menys jo? Ho intentis com ho intentis, si obres la porta, mai obres la porta. És el llenguatge qui l’obre per tu. Jo només entro. No hi ha cap porta. És com la mà. És tot. No existeix la mà. És una paraula com un senyalador de camins i fronteres. Jo només entro. L’instant finit del meu infinit entra en tu. Quan tu no hi ets. En aquesta manera teva de no ser-hi. En aquesta manera teva infinita de no ser-hi. Tu no ho intentis. Aquí no hi ets. Els matemàtics encara no s’han creat. El cel va ple d’àngels. Regna l’estómac. Res de cervells. Segurament demà neva. El dia no té finestra.

Cemetery

They made this city to confuse us. You enter following the thread of memory. Each walking his own thread. They are all different. Every exit different. The guides take us there. You go inside. You will never remember this place. There are letters and numbers. Sacred trees. Priestesses transformed into wild birds. Prophecies. We walk along with people. I won’t know how to go back there either. We walk among cypresses. Voluptuous. We like the cypresses. And also the oaks. Put me in an oak, like the Roudoreda. [*] Even dead you can’t stop kidding around. But I don’t laugh. Even if you get angry. Blind Borges [**] says that we are in a maze. I say one made out of Fog. It has a mute not a blind odour. And it knows how to transform facades. I won’t know my way back there. I tell you now while we are still together. While passing by effigies and angels. So you will know. In fact, one cannot go back anywhere. One always arrives a first time. Eternally one can only arrive once. You will stay here. If love were eternal, my voice wouldn’t be hidden behind my lips like a girl frightened by a stone-cold shock. From a blow to the heart. By a hard shock. Stone and wood. Wood gnawing at stone. The wet sound of cement, so moist, so absolutely sexual and humid. Penetrating. Terrifying like a rape. Pushing the rapist. Sweat beads falling on the non-existent belly, immobilizing me. Men's voices stop the crime. You are inside. I will not know my way back there. I toss rough balls of cypress up into the sky. Millions of unconnected words pass through my voice.

* Roudoreda (l. 8) is a play on the words roureda (oak grove) and the last name of the much acclaimed Catalan novelist Mercè Rodoreda whose 1962 La plaça del Diamant [translated in English by Peter Bush as In Diamond Square (London: Virago Press, 2013) and earlier by D.H. Rosenthal as The Time of the Doves (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1980)]. Written whilst in exile, the novel deploys a stream-of-consciousness narration with its dual focus upon the protagonist, Natàlia Colometa, and her emergence from submission to independence, and upon the chronicle of her Barcelona in the period of the Spanish Civil War. Nowadays it figures as a major literary text in Catalonia’s secondary curriculum.
** Blind Borges (l. 9) refers to Buenos Aires-born writer Jorge Luis Borges, some of whose best known short fantasy narratives—“The Two Kings and the Two Labyrinths (1939),”The Garden of Forking Pains” (1941),” “The House of Asterion (1947),” and “The Immortal (1947)”—explore the theme of life’s maze.

Cementiri

Van fer aquesta ciutat per a confondre’ns. S’hi entra seguint el fil de la memòria. Cada caminant el seu propi fil. Són tots diferents. Diferents totes les sortides. Els guies ens hi duen. Tu vas a dins. Mai recordaràs aquest lloc. Hi ha lletres i números. Arbres sagrats. Sacerdotesses transformades en aus salvatges. Profecies. Caminem amb gent. Jo tampoc sabré tornar-hi. Nem entre xiprers. Voluptuosos. Els xiprers en agraden, I també els roures. Posa’m dins d’un roure, com la Roudoreda. Ni mort pots deixar de fer bromes. Però no te les ric. Encara que t’enfadis. El cec Borges diu que som en un laberint. Jo dic de Boira. Que té olor muda i no cega. I sap transformar les façanes. No sabré tornar-hi. T’ho dic ara que encara estem junts. Mentre travessem efígies i àngels. Perquè ho sàpigues. De fet no es pot tornar enlloc. Sempre s’hi arriba per primera vegada. Contínuament només s’arriba. Tu et quedaràs aquí. Si l’amor fos etern, no se’m quedaria la veu amagada rere els llavis com una nena molt i molt espantada del sotrac sec. Del cop al cor. Del sotrac dur. Pedra i fusta. Fusta rosegant la pedra. So moll de ciment, tan moll, tan absolutament sexual i humit. Penetrant. Aterrador com una violació. Empenyent el violador. Gotes de suor cauen sobre el ventre inexistent, m’immobilitzen. Les veus dels homes aturen el crim. Tu ets a dins. No sabré tornar-hi. Llenço al cel boles aspres de xiprer. Em creuen la veu milions de paraules inconnexes.