INCA

I had no time to be ancient.
I went skipping through only several
Centuries, while I dashed around forests,
Clambered with boys up to the heights
From which you get the best view
Of the grown-ups exchanging kisses.

My people were clad in the color of gold
And dust. Therefore we worshipped the sun.
We made hairpins from parrot feathers.
Yellow and red and green fruits
Grew into our hands like the drops
Of waterfalls on our lips — we had no
Ritual of lunchtime.

We lived without words for
Footgear, timepiece, love.
The boys taught me the high tones
Of particular touches of the pampas and feet.
We lived by sound.
We did not do descriptions. We cheered.
And no matter when the condor did us the honor
Of newly performing its flight,
We held our breath, motionless.
Nothing but beauty was able
To stop us, while we existed.

Later, when they deleted us and called us
A civilization, marveled at the old
Accounting of time,
Their sorrowful poets sang
Of the former joy of a radiant people,
They also studied what they called
An ideal form of governance.

I had no time to be sad.
Horror sliced through life
With a blunt gesture.
The sword is madder than the hand that wields it.
All the same, when I think of the trained snakes
And the regal bowls of dignified poisons—
Better a people’s speedy death
Than to be granted a gradual end,
Better warm slaughter than a sarcophagus, solitary.

The boys and I smiled at the sun.
The goddess of finality performed a dance
Of airy leaps from the ocean onto the cliffs:
It is worth experiencing her fatal salto
From the clouds, hop! onto the llama’s back
And back again always differently.

The milk-colored people howled
From the effort, most likely,
Of swinging sharp and heavy
Metals that were not precious,
Of lighting the pyre,
Of the cargo of clothing made of gold.

But that performance passed as well
So that later people would recall
A successful screenplay.

Now the sky is clear and even lovelier.
The condor goes on drawing out its flight
From the era of quiet, gleaming children.
Then suddenly disappears frightened
At the unfamiliar sound of moaning.
That, they say, is some queen weeping,
Thinking that her god is punishing her
For time is passing, while her husband weary
From constant conquests can no longer
Wait for an heir.


***

Forty days I haven’t written a poem,
I, who do not count—especially the days—
Fixed in memory the start of the unutterable.
For forty days I’ve been listening to the perfection
Of mutely alternating verses
That won’t let themselves be caught in words.
Enchanted by the creation
Of an incessant
Collapse of nothing into everything.


Anatomy Lesson

I keep quiet.
Emptiness has no mouth. Only lack of satisfaction.
A trait of the womb.
The time when sounds came from her intestines has gone deaf.
I keep quiet and with those words I celebrate
love’s absence.
For every moment is a ceremony,
while time’s a mere memorial of transience.

We keep quiet.
They make a racket about conspiracies and new furniture.
They buy rooms. Sound amplifiers. They arm themselves.
They aim at us with a gasping that was never amorous.
They buy they buy they buy
the fastest fliers that in ever shorter time
reduce the planet to a rumor
about how we are losers, about the end of the world.
We keep quiet and with those words we write this chapter out.
For only an endless story is a story,
whereas one that admits its end is not.

You keep quiet.
I observe your hair growing and see the act
of change
in a revolution of hairs colored by sun.
No, you haven’t gone silent love.
They bought a tree for the leaf alone
with your note that we should burn it.
For only what seeks no proof exists,
saved from our wish for duration.