for Natalia

By the way of the hills of Scotland Or the shores of Wales, your ancestor Rode the waters, sand and stone to land At Chile. He gave you, your unusual eyes.

His forgotten tongue you had to relearn In America, where I still labor to perfect Its speaking. It’s the only language I can write to you, myself in.

A person of class, my friend calls you. You now in a plane high above Texas, Across whose borders lies your country, In whose streets disbelief greets you.

Habla Espanol Senorita! These exclamations point to the secrets of distant origins, we are all that Even if we are lost. You are soon headed to India, it informs me still and my reticence around you.

How your eyes hide green coral! Such words Perhaps you may read in glances in the dusty streets Of Poona, I couldn’t say them. The only words left To say then are perhaps these by Neruda:

“Tu presencia es ajena, extraña a mí como una cosa. Pienso, camino largamente, mi vida antes de ti. Mi vida antes de nadie, mi áspera vida. El grito frente al mar, entre las piedras, corriendo libre, loco, en el vaho del mar. La furia triste, el grito, la soledad del mar. Desbocado, violento, estirado hacia el cielo.

Tú, mujer, qué eras allí, qué raya, qué varilla de ese abanico inmenso? Estabas lejos como ahora. Incendio en el bosque! Arde en cruces azules. Arde, arde, llamea, chispea en árboles de luz.”

Gracias! Adios!

English Translation

"Your presence is foreign, as strange to me as a thing. I think, I explore great tracts of my life before you. My life before anyone, my harsh life. The shout facing the sea, among the rocks, running free, mad, in the sea-spray. The sad rage, the shout, the solitude of the sea. Headlong, violent, stretched towards the sky.

You, woman, what were you there, what ray, what vane of that immense fan? You were as far as you are now. Fire in the forest! Burn in blue crosses. Burn, burn, flame up, sparkle in trees of light."

Things begin with awakenings, today At dawn, six thirty, on one side of me A wall of books holding fort, the wall With a window on the other side.

You then surely must have attacked me From above, from the roof, descending From the sky, a black dive bomber.

These days on your hands, I see A holographic diorama of fucks. Perhaps the imagination of my memory is stronger than your memory of the past. And it’s memory that makes life such a bitch.

You know how to absolve memory In every new pelt that covers you, which you read and place inside of you, Till you become a library of congresses, Till you lose track of the number of those volumes.

I, however, polish all my memories into knives, which I carry on my back. I hunch under their weight. Such is the punishment for ignorance and such is the training to fight you as you tumble out of the sky to drop your bombs.

In the shadows greened by the foliage Of the woods, the quiet of the universe Meets the tumult of desire.

We too search for quietude In bars, in other bodies: penetrating them Or letting them penetrate us.

But we don’t meet it. It grows distant In every successive dream of which we Remember only the most tantalizing pieces.

These ripen like tomatoes in pots of poems, As nipples do inside someone else’s mouth. We open our mouth to eat and taste air.

As unsatisfied as we are, we must learn to stalk What we seek, in the woods filled with flowing water, Our vast hearts, those conduits of blood!