translation from Caneca de anhelos turbios
encounter
a grenade for christopher columbus
like hominids
in the margins of the word
discovery
this i give you, columbus
this cramped ambition
in my empty pockets
i can hear the dogs in the distance
the sirens are calling
because odysseus
i met you
dragging your pedestrian eyes
closed like widows
i met you
before the fonalledas-carriones
pallid miners of ivus
there
near the plaza
where skeletons rest
at your ferrous feet that lament
the amplitude of stars
between regulations you carry
various persecuted peoples
various economies inferior
to hell
and they’re so full
i’m burnt by smell when seeing the ill-fated
charge me without knowing his ill-fate
ay the vaults
you stole
they stole from you!
ay what poor quadruped executioner!
in the stalls of the bombonera
your academics yearn
your rubber chronicles
your cutis of anti-past
and you say i’m sorry
in the slot machines that repeat
i’m sorry
pay a quarter
and light a candle for my soul
no, my heart
doesn’t have the shape
of a threatened beat
hung from a gunshot
nor is it the exact rosary
of a finger
that makes the sign of the holy cross
with banners and facing walls
my heart doesn’t have the shape
of a pious follower
or greedy sailor
it has a heart shape
and when it wants it takes the shape
of a tailor
a woman
a cane side eye
or a chess game
columbus
you are shapeless
you have a hole
that wasn’t
and your face is a gust
of golden wind