Mediodía de domingo en el cementerio Père Lachaise

«No sé quién seas, pero no apartes todavía tus manos
de mis ojos,
prolonga mi ceguera imprevista y la vacilación de mi pie
sobre el empedrado inconcluso.
Por entre el laberinto de las criptas
bajo la fronda y el señuelo o la licencia de los trinos,
escucha conmigo el tribunal bullicioso y tajante de los mirlos
por encima del respiro en suspenso de estos nombres de cuerpos
ya improbables disueltos en la cifra de una brevedad estanca:
signos tallados sobre las lápidas prolijas
cual enseñas de un comercio inútil.
Quienquiera que seas, guía mi deriva por un atajo tácito
a través de la Ciudadela de encrucijadas recíprocas,
la del sabor de erosión de los encomios, de las divisas desvalidas
ganadas por el musgo.
Advierte en la profusión de las ofrendas un tributo magro.
Desatiende el temblor recluido en mi silencio
y adiestra aún mis párpados a rehuir una vez más el hallazgo de
tu rostro, la llaga de tu soplo».

We were living the afternoon of an overwhelming Sunday.
It was summer in our hemisphere, according to the order of the stars.
Tangled in leisure, we strolled from chair to chair, stumbling.
It was summer afternoon, and the rest of the picture
was flies.

A universe dispersed throughout the room:
empty bottles,
pages of some newspaper, an impotent duster surrendered to dirt,
and the air, yawning up to complaint, burning in all four corners.

«Nothing worse than the poem never written», I told myself in silence
shouting into my ear,
and the only real thing, consistent in itself, was the flies.
Countless flies, clumsy flies, falling on us in successive arrivals and
departures.

The air was burning in all four corners, our pair of arms too many,
legs redundant, and the whole body a useless luxury,
a sumptuous article acquired through force
by virtue of a skilful seller’s sleight of hand.
Mountebanks of the air, acrobats, crumbs of a great demon
reduced to dust,
those tender, dirty flies, tiny idols of universal disgust.
We had not survived our wild fable:
young newlyweds melted on the floor, pure molasses
at the mercy of a Summersday, at the mercy of the strategy
of the flies.

And it was Sunday, like a hundred times more it would be Sunday
during summers from that day on,
and from each day in which the sun would light up the air,
and a buzz toll the windowpanes, and unrest grow all over.
Something penetrating from outside, a kind of aggressive liquid,
a caustic liquor diluting flesh or memory,
something happening to time, did not satisfy us.

¿Who, at this point, stops the stream
of things and events, like a collapsing bridge,
while the mutilated day passes dragging the limbs
painfully?

«Nothing worse than the poem never written», I told myself,
meanwhile
poetry rescuing its wounded from the teeth inwards;
from the eyes outwards, the only real thing was the flies.

Traducción al inglés de Miriam Heard y Andrés Claro