Poem: The White Rivers

A blank sheet of paper can be blank and feel as white as your solitary misery; a blank sheet is a book's door, irreverent—anonymous face—it often begins a testament. I don't say then, this is the last time I walk the city, for I carry no blank sheets to write my testament. But I do walk the city one last time, and my hand—unhappy comb—caresses your hair.

We go out to walk this city, once ours, that ruined building, symptom of bygone splendor, another logbook in these submerged streets, a hallucinatory river envelops us, and only departure is offered to us, leaving a blank sheet on the wood—our raft—supposedly it was a table, a table for making love without pilgrim airs, without migratory aims.

II

On this table that we skinned yesterday, turned into firewood,
the waters roll, the river I always longed for,
renewed water,
in a neighboring house I used to walk it
like one who touches its waters and remains a stranger.

I decided on the movement to have a house,
a simple dwelling, constantly renewed, like the waters.

Then I had a mud house,
taplán, taplán, I smiled at the fall of its strength.

My cousins ​​were there to hold it up,
ending up being a stranger in space,
each line renewed, each imperfect curve
stopped in sequences of the river,
I had to follow its course
be an undefined raft, my own residence,
my family renewed in each slat,
specters on waters
fluidity of the river on the table
where we flayed our last glances.

III

I should have created, at the precise moment,
a memorable journey
without straight lines, curves.

Only a known beginning and destination.
The crowd passes, speaking of the in-between,
leaving behind phrases of the celebrated space.

I should have inhabited a memorable journey
between the silhouette of the Nile or the Ganges,
though they are usually known as familiar rivers.

They can speak of their in-between,
not of their death.

Only I leap from beginning to end,
from end to beginning,
as I leap from any bridge, any hill,
seconds in the in-between space,
only I leap at the precise moment.

Collecting moistened crumbs
with my feet.

Foot on rock
rock in the streets of Saint-Émillion,
foot on cobblestone street,
river flowing, Nile through the city
at its beginning and end,
between the desert and the patched-up rooms,
the hanging balconies of Saint-Émillion,
this may be the known moment,
and my feet—beautiful boats—
without straight lines or curves,
the memorable space.

IV

The boat is fragile like a leaf, beginning of the journey, white raft, my body gravitates in its splendor, we leave the lighthouse in retreat—a glimmer of death—, a dying white light, the last sign of the earth.

I remember playing in this lighthouse, making other pilgrim bodies fly, stripes and triangles formed its shape. My body leaped to the lighthouse's eminence, like a white, fragile leaf, jumping back to the beginning, the city's lighthouse, the last lighthouse toward safe harbor. I've never had another destiny, you've never had another destiny, only the light that accompanies it, that accompanies us to the end of this immense piece of paper, an immense sea begun on the coast we try to unravel, like the shores of Alexandria, the last port, trying to reach its light, and it's not light, but mystery.

Then comes the moment for someone to say:
Death is an animal that surprises us.

I feel my head, I discover it.

Death can occupy hundreds of heads,
but I am not a specter.

I sometimes had a pact with her;
she was indifferent to me,
even though her head formed part of the passing.
Death, unfinished animal,
someone passes by, dazzles me.

Remember: there is not only death
we can be varieties,
even ways of dying.

Not only being thrown from a bridge or by a bridge.

The situation is the fall
there my pact overflows.

Let's imagine the bridge, it can be any bridge,
gather the necessary beams, write: we crossed there
we saw the green hills of Avignon.
The two green plumes, piled up, born from your body.

I should have climbed a mountain, that much-mentioned mountain.
Throw myself in its fall
to the green plain where I confuse and distort my sorrows,
Because it has been said of death: it is an animal that surprises.
I have seen no more than your orbits dance
when I considered the story told
you offered only death
the animal in your eyes
fierce beauty in the pupil, drilling into space.