|
 (Born
in Santiago de Chile in 1962). PABLO NERUDA NATIONAL
PRIZE OF POETRY 2001 and many others in Chile, Spain and
Argentina. He is the author of Por ínsulas extrañas
(1982), No el azar-Hors du hasard (1987), Visión del
oráculo (1993), Romper los ojos (1994), Escenas del
derrumbe de Occidente (1998), Réquiem (2001), Memoria
muerta (2003) and Demonio de la nada (2005). Also
several books of essays Altazor de puño y letra (2001)
and De palabra y obra (2003), for example. He is
professor of Spanish and Latin American literature at
the University of Chile and at the University Finis
Terrae at Santiago de Chile |
The
Visionaries
We were all going to be Rimbaud,
we were all going to be Artaud,
we were all going to be Poe.
The truth is that neither Verlaine,
nor any minor poet, neither those lines
of the little court scrivener.
Nothing, not even in the air, not one poem:
We were all going straight to the charnel house.
Mandate from Heaven
Someone somewhere speaks few words, gives a few orders.
That's when histories are written:
covenants, balance sheets, debts we incurred,
signatures we penned
while bathed in sweats of ego and ferocity.
Someone somewhere reads those words, hears those orders.
That's when windows close on us
and our transparent hearts believe in death.
Foreknowledge
Sense of foreknowledge, smug death,
sense of cancer somewhere, of iron and blows on iron;
sense of duty which fogs the senses,
sense within words: vain concealment.
Foreknowledge of sense, of native habit
and ingenious demons lying in wait, here, now.
Sense which revives. Foreknowledge which destroys.
Is it eagles or sand that rains from every night-time
sky?
Matter
Let them all skitter madly along: carnations, eyes,
gulls and the other birds, afternoon and evening;
everyone and everything, let it all just scurry through
its undeceptive course!
Up or down
-shifting slowly, slowly-
the objects sit, waiting for their time to come.
Oblivion
This material age: materially
in shapes that flaunt themselves even in collapse,
we grow then stumble on our own debris.
Dice on the table:
squared-off trifles of fortune,
in motion already, or we fling them
feverishly,
leaping in the act into the pit.
Material of materials, our eyes:
chance and thought are our oblivion. |
