1910
(Intermezzo)

Those eyes of mine in nineteen-ten
did not see the dead buried,
no market fair of ash from the one who weeps at dawn,
no trembling heart stuck like a sea horse.

Those eyes of mine in nineteen-ten
saw the white corner-wall where young girls pissed,
the bull's snout, the poisonous toadstool
and an incomprehensible moon illuminating in corners
the dried lemon rinds under hard black bottles.

Those eyes of mine on the pony's neck,
on the pierced breast of Santa Rosa napping,
on the housetops of love, with groans and cool hands,
in a garden where cats feast on frogs.

Attic where ancient dust collects statues and moss.
Boxes that guard silence of devoured crabs.
In the place where the dream ran against its reality.
My little eyes are there.

Ask me nothing. I've seen how things
that seek their path find only emptiness.
There are spaces that ache in the air without people
and in my eyes uniformed creatures-without their nakedness!

 

continue with Dale Smith's Lorca Interliner >>