Poems |
Poems |
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* * I shaved in the mirror of the train station in the hotel room. I washed my face and the water from the faucet was freezing and it was winter in the city where I was born and in the one I was passing through I saw my green bag thrown into a corner and I said to myself "this is how fugitives live" Later I sat down on the edge of the bed and in the light of a white lamp stand I opened my book a third world version of Chekov's The Madman and I waited for her. * * * My eyes are like made glassy with beer and a girl looks at me behind the window of the bar She's not even fifteen and she already seems expert in La Bailanta (1) I return to my glass and I try to think about the soccer game and I don't know why I can only think about Nabokov who could be on a night like this seated here in a bar in Buenos Aires with a darkskinned teenager piercing his eyes into her soul I return to the window and the girl is no longer there I look behind me and I see her chatting with the waiter then she says goodbye and she leaves Nabokov and I will always be those eternally solitary people that adolescents look at but don't notice. * * * Last night in the bar I wanted so badly to die alone I needed to be resucitated so much with a woman lying across me that finally I kept on drinking until I no longer had any strength and I thought about you lying face down almost nude with only your white trousers on sleeping until six * * * Lately I fell hopelessly in love with the ass of the stewardess on the train to Villa María I returned tired of life on Thursday from the filmclub and it was winter and even though this once I had somewhere to fall dead I remembered all the other winters when I had nothing and I also thought about the winters that would come and I would have nothing Later Flori appeared in my life the stewardess disappeared and I fell hopelessly in love with her also with her ass with the way in which she moved her hands when she talked with her little girl's face when she took me for the first time to her room in her parents' house to show me her things and in less than ten minutes we were naked fucking on her llama-skin comforter Lately I left and came back several times from the pain and sometimes from the enthusiasm I read a lot I thought a lot and most of the time I did absolutely nothing But I remembered Mr. Poet when I went to see his house and he asked me how everything was going and I told him about the stewardess and about Flori and Mr. Poet got into his Buddhist master pose he pointed to me like a Nero from Villa María and he talked to me about maturity about serenity about wisdom about the wisdom that was capable of repressing desire and that for a long time he no longer wrote about the great themes but rather that now he was in the little plant the little flower the little bird and those minimalistic things Later he quoted Marcus Aurelius to me and he even read me an entire paragraph in which Mr. Emperor said that sex was a muscular contraction and a secretion of mucous He laughed hugely and he said to me " ho, ho, ho, ho...Marcus Aurelius....Lord of the World... and writing this...ho, ho, ho, ho...he was a genius....ho,ho,ho,ho" and I said to him "maybe he was menopausal when he wrote it" and he " but pleeeeeese, dear one....stop fuckinggggg... thissssss is true wisdom... thissssss is true maturity...." Lately I have thought that maturity is when for a long time nothing very much happens to you. * * * That's the way I lived for those years like those mangy dogs that pile up in doorways like used clothing that poor people pass from hand to hand that's the way I lived for those years and I only wanted my daily bread and my mate tea (2) and the morning water that froze at night and the winter and I am not going to beg you to be with me if you don't want to because you are always different every other day only some woman to caress me in the dark only some woman who lets me love her and the next day hard bread dunked into the maté and the hard baked earth of my town that dawns and the winter and the widgeons that fly high announcing the end of the afternoon Like that until I die * * * You have on your apron with the blue and red checks and you sell me my daily bread You are six months pregnant and you have very long black hair pulled back Your dark adolescent face from Polinesia never smiles at me and you say to me -something else? and I -No, not right now and this dialog is always repeated even though there are ten people waiting or we are alone at nine o'clock at night and each time that you give me a little paper bag with the fifteen cent rolls or the nylon bag with the two loaves of bread you say to me -thank you very much and I say to you -no, thank you and I leave Every time we say goodbye in the same way and you remain serious alone or with people You will give birth in September. * * * At eight in the evening by my window I am at the table resting my elbows on the window frame I see a O60 that turns the corner there is a trucker on the corner (3) life looks like this from the second floor and I have on the table this kind of snack a bottle of "Rugantino" wine one of nineteen bought days ago at the SuperLiberty a piece of black bread on the plate and the last bite of cold cuts bought last night from Roxana cut by her mother who always says to me "What else can I get you, Daddy?" The rest is such a dense heat the 4 pesos that will have to last me until Thursday and the night that has just begun and already announces itself closed and dead. Little Televison Set I had a little black and white television set that my friend Gerardo lent me so that I could watch the world cup games of O98. It was red plastic and portable with a manual knob for the channels and its tube was almost worn out. So that when there was a game I had to turn it on a half hour before so that it could heat up, and because it kept on looking very dark, I closed the blinds, I turned off the lights and I sat on my bed with a blanket pulled over my head and a cup of hot mate in my hands. Alone. And that was how I got ready to see the world cup. But when transmission time came, the ball was barely a difuse white tablet and the light of the field was fading more and more. It was under those conditions that I tried to see the game between Belgium and Mexico. The game started at eleven o'clock in the morning and my room was freezing. But in the second period it got so dark that I had to turn off the set because I couldn't even make out the players. I remember that the Belgians , who were very bitter people, were winning two to zero without deserving to, with two of their boring head goals. That was how things were when I unplugged the game and to keep myself from getting sick, I put on a cassette and starting turning around. I ended up going to the bakery on the corner that at that time still belonged to The Redhead, with the light of the ice cream case on as its only light source. I bought a French roll (I always bought one) and she was watching the game too and she told me that it had just ended and that it was tied two to two. I couldn't believe it. So I stayed awhile so I could see the replay of Mexico's goals and than I returned very happily to my rented and empty room. Several days later I threw the little television set out on the sidewalk. I think it was the same day that the Dutch beat us out of the world cup. I remember too that that day, an hour after the game ended, on a wall of the Ex Market someone had written with an aerosol can "Fucking Dutch Fags." ______________________________ End Notes: 1. Very popular dance form among lower classes of Argentine teenagers. 2. "Mate cocido" is a tea made of strained leaves rather than the traditional maté drunk from a gourd. Iván is making a parallel between the "cooked" tea and the "baked" earth. 3. A "remisero" is a pick-up truck driver--a strong, simple man--who makes his living transporting furniture and other heavy items. |
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