Brief history of pain

I am a boy playing with dead fish
I hang them from the line where my grandmother
hangs freshly washed clothes
there dry my fish
with tails gripped by the wooden pins
face down dripping the last drops of the sea
that are God's tears
that do not exist but it does not matter
because when I am grown
and I wear a uniform
and die in the war
I will have to believe in him
to let the light enter my body
to bear the spilling blood
that will fill my mother's breast with pain.

© photo by Adrian Arias
Translation by Nina Serrano
Nov 2009
part of the unpublished book
“Book looking for where to live”

I open a box and...

I open a box and find the dissected wing of a bird…
I don’t remember having put it there …
I open another box and out comes your voice…
but how is it possible to hear your voice after so many years …?
I open another box and find my complete collection of spinning tops...
now I remember that I never had a spinning top collection…
I open another box and there is a sweet scent like my grandmother’s perfume…
the one she wore the day she died…
I open another box and my hands are stained with coal…
I look at my hands and I don’t want to wash them…
I open another box and there is my first tooth…
no, it is my daughter’s first tooth...
I open another box and all the bills I haven’t paid appear…
next to all the money that I thought I had lost…
I open another box and a mirror sends back my own face…
It looks at me with curiosity…
I open a box and a bug comes flying out…
I jump back in fear but then I recognize it…
as the one that was telling me where to put all the things found in my moving
the moving of my dreams the moving of my heart
the moving of my milk teeth
the moving of skin of pills of slaps of kisses
the moving that I swallow without chewing
that lives exhausted at the feet of forgetfulness
and awakens every time I open a box.
(July 28)

Translation by Nina Serrano

2 POEMS - 2 POEMAS

Precipitations of the skin / Precipitaciones de la piel

I slide on the precipice of your skin
and find the beginning of life.

...

Resbalo por el precipicio de tu piel
y encuentro el principio de la vida.



What is a body?
an accumulation of organs?
a space of biological dimension?
a brain giving orders to a heart?
a heart disobeying orders?
rivers of blood wanting to stay living within?
an extension of skin forming a person?
a space without remedy?
a place that dies if not caressed?

...

¿Qué es el cuerpo?
¿una acumulación de órganos?
¿un espacio de dimensiones biológicas?
¿un cerebro dando órdenes a un corazón?
¿un corazón desobedeciendo las órdenes?
¿ríos de sangre que se quieren quedar a vivir dentro?
¿una extensión de piel que construye a una persona?
¿un espacio sin remedio?
¿un lugar que se muere si no lo acaricias?



Oh! Body traveling without a ship in space
journeying through the emptiness they have left
the caresses of yesterday
breathing the poluted air
from the bruises of childhood
with the only hope of falling
into the steep mountain path of skin
open your arms and surrender yourself
for now it is already time for a hug.

...

Oh! Cuerpo que viajas sin nave en el espacio
recorriendo el vacío que han dejado
las caricias de ayer
respirando el aire viciado
de los moretones de la infancia
con la única esperanza de caer
en el desfiladero de la piel
abre los brazos y entrégate
que ya es hora de un abrazo.



Your body is the only clock
that makes me arrive on time.

...

Tu cuerpo es el único reloj
que me hace llegar a tiempo.

...Turn off the light and open your eyes / …Apaga la luz y abre los ojos

(...Turn off the light and open your eyes
enter into the house of your body
and go over it without any rush…)

-for the two Marias, my mother and my grandmother-

I am of flesh and dream
part made of carbon part of light
from fragments of recycled skin of my grandparents
but without the wrinkles that come always on time

Each day I am night and each night
paper where what is written
is unfamiliar (and also the usual)
that I am only bone
and to no one even though now I belong
to the hands of the woman who caresses me

I am only crack and shadow
a bit of yesterday mixed
with a little piece of tomorrow.



(…Apaga la luz y abre los ojos
entra en la habitación de tu cuerpo
y recórrela sin apuro…)

-para las dos Marías, mi madre y mi abuela-

Soy de carne y sueño
parte hecho de carbón parte de luz
de trozos de piel recicladas de los abuelos
pero sin las arrugas que esas llegan solas
siempre a tiempo

cada día soy noche y cada noche
papel donde se escribe
lo que no se acostumbra (y lo otro también)
que soy sólo hueso
y de nadie aunque ahora le pertenezco
a las manos de la mujer que me acaricia

soy sólo grieta y sombra
un trozo de ayer mezclado
con un pedacito de mañana.