Extracts
…………………………………………………………………………
Tell those who were waiting not to wait none of us will return. The
sky is leaving again, the newspapers dissolve in the corridor, the same
trees pass again darker before us, those who wrench the doors looking
for a place, who are coming in at the next stop. The light outside
cutting the evening to pieces, harsh evenings that fall among strangers,
the story shatters within you, pieces, fading away in the ebb of this
time, that melt one into the other before you sleep. And the snail
hurries to go back on its tracks, a tale you remember unfinished,
wrinkles that still hold a colour on memory's transient seed, birds that
awake the dew on their wings and you leave with them into the all-white
frozen sky, but you wake and are baked again. Not the fever, the
remembrance of sorrow exhausts you you don't know why, before you are
well awake and the barren feeling comes back again to your hands, the
rest suddenly fades away at once, you are one recollection a broken box
emptying, after the tempest this calm, you search for support, get up
like an old man, feel cold, remember birds' wings, magistrates' sticks
decorated with feathers the bones of an angel, sink again images and
words monotonous prayer.
………………………………………………………………………….
with cotton wool or toilet paper which crammed your mouth, soaks up
your saliva, you are scarcely able to breathe. But mainly you are
thirsty, this wakes you up and the glass beside you empty. Night still
but what time, you will get up to ask for some water, the carriage
deserted, farther back, drops on the window, you wet your hand to wet
your mouth, further still further back the carriage deserted, and one
more, shudder, like voices that swell, a carriage of voices. They give
you water. Their animals sleep at the back, they ask you questions you
sit among them. You drink water again. Laughter, voices ask you would
say something but you feel dizzy. A piece of meat from hand to hand, you
go and lie down at the side, they give you food, a bottle from hand to
hand, wine, a circle further back singing, the others between the
animals sleep. Dark faces, voices fraying in bitter carnival, their
heads, changing animal heads, the lamb's body ends in the head of a man
with eyes shut. They put someone, between two windows and he raises his
hands, tall and broad, they bind him by the wrists to the bars, left
right. Lamb's head, they put on his head the skin from its flayed head.
They speak to him. He sings. Slow, disjointed song. Dark the cross of
the man as day breaks. They dress him in a blue garment, beside you
someone was turning a torch on and off from joy emotion their eyes were
wet. The alien joy of children, your smile with them for a while, and
then as if someone had gagged you but you calm down again and breathe
freely. And they were showing the livid scars on their faces, victories
that had conquered the world, our faith, they were saying and our body
one body in Him, you could hear them singing, it won't be long until the
day comes, the season will change. Around you all red. And outside,
along the view of the river beating up to the windows, slower now the
train in its bend, and wherever they could, all together, a closing
circle, the native women trying to climb aboard.
Lorries pouring tons of mud mounting up. Smell of the coffee, boiled
in a pot, they gave me a cup, you answer their same words with your
hands, you don't know how else. From the window the river like sending
out light from within, blinding you. Your eyelids with all the weight.
The line of the horizon. Blurs. A wave spreading out of control with
nowhere to cling to turning back and cascading to the expanses of snow.
The workmen of a gang raising a dyke, and building. Bridges, one almost
finished. To the crest of the mountain out of control and shuddering
upwards.
Wine again. Every so often they would fill up, once they washed the
eyes of the cross of the lamb that was looking around. They were
touching and they were singing. As if your hands were pierced. And the
nails not to rust from the blood, singing. And something like: the
crosses, the crosses ill-omened. With rhythms that made you dizzy again,
in the slow whirl of the light growing stronger, in the carriage
spinning round with you.
……………………………………………………………………….
The slow bells from the church which must be near me I stopped for a
while and waited and now they were chiming again. And here where I sat,
like stains below the slabs as if blooded. Who was there ringing,
guesses confused not made clear, who was there ringing the bell waves
going down the dome, the echo of an ocean that licks on it and drips
here. And the flashes through the window from the one to the other like
a searchlight turning around seeking me out. Here, in a flooded pit full
of bodies, branches that cover and float leaves that float on faces
unknown funerary gifts on the side, phrases by him and the Writ mixed on
this page, and further down sea tombs and then something between the
frozen palms. Gestures of the walls that invite you. A hole high up
opposite, you can hold on to the shoots of the ivy to climb up and see
where exactly you are. You don't care, the tracks hold you the people
they brought here, something of what they lived, and the pain they felt
like you and they came and sat here together like the leaves that came
in where from you don't know a pile that gathers in front of the saints,
and them all together, one by the other, side by side, opposite all
together to look at them kneel, a circle, that will hold them a while.
But, release, and what's left, yellow mouths leaving again from those
arches which covered them and they dream still for a while of courtyards
where the souls find rest, a flower sequence of angels awaiting them
there. And then the illusion dries up and it is an empty uninhabited
house. The icons below the colour that changes the same shape the same
face painted again on all the walls. And there in the corner the body
demolished, like metal plates sunken within it, until dark falls
completely leaning out from the last fading saint his face pressing lips
tight.
|