La vida, esta vida
me placía, su instrumento, esas palomas...
Me placía escucharlas gobernarse en lontananza,
advenir naturales, determinado el número,
y ejecutar, según sus aflicciones, sus dianas de animales.
Encogido,
oí desde mis hombros
su sosegada producción,
cave los albañales sesgar sus trece huesos,
dentro viejo tornillo lincharse el plomo.
Sus paujiles picos,
pareadas palomitas,
las póbridas, hojeándose los hígados,
sobrinas de la nube... Vida! Vida! Esta es lavida!
Zurear su tradición rojo les era,
rojo moral, palomas vigilantes,
talvez rojo de herrumbre,
si caían entonces azulmente.
Su elemental cadena,
sus viajes de individuales pájaros viajeros,
echaron humo denso,
pena física, pórtico influyente.
Palomas saltando, indelebles
palomas olorosas,
manferidas venían, advenían
por azarosas vías digestivas,
a contarme sus cosas fosforosas,
pájaros de contar,
pájaros transitivos y orejones...
No escucharé ya más desde mis hombros
huesudo, enfermo, en cama,
ejecutar sus dianas de animales... Me doy cuenta.
***
Life, this life
pleased me, its instrument, those doves...
It pleased me to listen to them steer in the distance,
to come natural, determined in number,
and carry out, according to their afflictions, their animal reveilles.
Shrugged,
I heard in my shoulders
their quiet production,
their thirteen bones slanted the sewers,
inside old screw lynch the lead.
Their cashew bird beaks,
coupled dovelings,
the rotted, leafing through their livers,
nieces of the cloud... Life! Life! This is life!
To coo their tradition was red to them,
moral red, watchful doves,
perhaps rust-red,
if they fell then bluely.
Their elemental chain,
their travels of individual traveling birds,
blew out dense smoke,
physical grief, influential portico.
Leaping doves, indelible
fragrant doves,
foretold they came, turned out
by troubled digestive tracts,
to tell me their phosphorous things,
counting birds,
transitive birds and noble Inca birds...
I will no longer hear them from my shoulders
bony, sick, bedridden
to carry out their animal reveilles... I realize that.
Translated from Spanish to English by Stephen Cole.
