SAFE IN STRANGENESS

Once more does this story tell
The voice of tars
And the outstanding cold of halls

But you must not recognize it;

A brought-on order of gardens leaving
Luxury and devastation in the gaze

And the uneasiness of rocking-chairs, being
Neutrality their only thud on wood

But you won’t go to meet them now.

And that’s all:
As when rain lays down on sand
A dark respect,
An invertebrate blackout will come
To leave reverse light and sharp air
Like a never agreed visit who turns up
Bringing real coal and desolate
Cheese in his hands

And once more will you raise
The song of estrangement
Against the peaceable ones

Though you’ll be far away by then.

There was that other time and other occupations: crazy
Hands upon the snow, in their fire-full
Serenity.

Now it’s time
For you to let go what cannot be appeased,

Open the door to dryness

And stay, at last, alone,
Sitting and unsheltered
And with a trifle of very scarce light
Upon your knees.

Under the mildness protections do not give.

This town,
Full of anodyne dogs and opposite
Trees and ponds
With the sour waters arranged
By the civil language of Acts,
Keeps names in its census
Of birds bursting
Between pushing wings
Against statues flamed up by moderation.
                                  Which is not my own.

Rings fall
Off heaven down to this street
Where bunches of mist release greedy gases
And manage to touch with their white hooves
The panes standing on the dusk
Of the last lightened premises.
The sure record of some steps
Someone moves towards permanence
And guidings walks down this street.
                                  Steps which are not mine.

Sharpness is seen
In the wet lips of this façade.
Among rents of ashes, too, a house grazed
By the blue impulse of reluctance.
There snips are found spinning
In rooms where the swell of gossip
May still be heard. From memory run
Prints and fungi on names and albums
Compelling a guest to wash.
                                  Who is not me.

Dreams falling
In a bed both content and unsteady
Where the glass of desertion burst
Don’t call relief by its name.
The bed I want now, the one
I grope for, scratching
To find the final bones of another body
Which light held upon its nails
And the flight towards a pronoun proposed on the skin.
                                  A flight not taken with me.

A crowd and its final pegs
Enter this heart. Everything fits
In a single page
Learnt only by one who crosses
Out the names’ tricks in memory
But saves the music
Of the unwonted, the beat of strangeness each being
Listens to until smeared
With the slow lick of a Rule.
                                  Which I won’t name here.

                                              (able)

Join the precise valour to initiate the day.
The formulae of sleep, with the first bells,
Start burning; and you begin the morning’s
Hard slopes, shining and restless
Like summer honey left upon your shoulders.
Besides you, heavily fall names and numbers.
And the street noise: a cruel commodity
You cannot grasp today.
                                    You follow with the sweet storm
                                    Of another name on your lips.
                                    And you start coming
                                    Down the evening end, where walls with sun
                                    From certain last streets that leave you sleepless
                                    When looked at directly are awaiting you.

Eventually, overcome and simple, you will learn
How to conform to endings: night and its offerings.
And when forsaken by the sabres of modesty
You will believe to have been, at least, deserving of
The rose of denial which the day drops at the door
Of those who do not yield, and know there is relief
Traversing on their own the frozen palaces
Of thought, where are no beckonings,
Nor eagerness, nor company: a length only
Of terrible visits leaping over the window
To replace the world there, in the cold
Stores of the customary, where somebody has kindled
—Able, unauthorized—, the light of strangeness.

If I grant my eyes to the night,
What a violent garden
Of bodies and shadows summoned to darkness.
And then
What profusion of signs
That lighten the town
Bathing it in the sour
Milk of disorder.
All is valid. Hands clash
Like cold records
And another disposition
Comes out of the white grease of oblivion.

Down
Does the bright swell of chance fall
From the dice
And dead tigers lie along the avenues...

O town, nightly town,
Sweep me in the happy air of your brooms!
And leave in my hands
The careless wound of what doesn’t know calm
In names
Nor the vinegar captive in schedules
Nor memory’s dreadful hosepipes,
Which let out pitch and fixity
Over the breeding grounds of quietness.

The sweet structures of chance
Come down to upset
The catalogues’ order,
Customs and their painful
Sweets, the intimate burn
Of accuracy in words...

How should I know the answer
To their calling, to their costly tones speaking
Not of fixities, but of freedom.
And when will we become blind
In order to see all clear!
Against mirrors, against numbers
There is still a pending revolution
Starting in the gaze’s childhood to set fire
Once more to the soul in retreat from things.
Enter, enter —me too—
Into the other side of calculations,
Where cold syrup dreams of a garden
With vague tunes and strange amounts
Of decimal ice.
And let cycles break down and the juices
Of objectiveness rot!
Must not serene air keep coming out
Of what is neither luxury
Nor efficacy
Nor medals’ grease?
Or will you just see unbearable-eyed insects,
Coming in to found
With their excessive stamens
All the ways of conformity?
How should I know
But… now,
Now
Chance is descending with its mystery,
A rustle of
Crumpled blankets falls
And a wrong, tiny face
Enters to replace life
In the sad tax of usage.
And nobody notices? Listen:
Someone is slightly treading
On rings and calendars,
Leaves urine boiling
In the scent of regulations
And brings under his tongue
Lots of excess, lightened handfuls
Of salt,
Wild back teeth
That break the joints
From where this swell, this bellow
Of light no one expected
Is arising
Like the stain of a morning
Of hot birds and nervous razors.

We shall see it.

This invasion with no kingdom
And no queen.

No matter how much the size of reluctance falls
Upon still handles and zippers
Unattended inside wardrobes
Where the past and its dark molluscs sleep,

                                    We always hear another song ahead.

And though silence begins entering suitcases,
Like a damp woman who, on passing by,
Leaves furious roe and the liquor of pity
In rooms of desperate clothes
Cooling under the abandonment’s theory,

                                    We are waiting for a summons.

Locks will shut their wings
With their accurate bite.
We shall see the backs of things,
Forever committed to their wholeness.

All will be full and calm

And cold
Like quiet towels in the night.

But, more than ever,

Those signs announce to us
That they are arrangements for a journey.

(this other order)

With a noise of reverse silver,
A firm, obscure truth
Traverses the torpor
Of rooms where all the
World-counting priests sleep
Within their talismans’ frost.

It enters with its ochre snort
To bewilder
The courtesy gestures,
To place the breath of distress
In everything it touches
With its stirring light,
With its mortal milk and a splashing
Of beaten cream.
No one opens his eyes, out of their sockets by now,
Nor raises his fingers,
Burnt by the whiplash of burdens.
And there is no hesitation
In its arrival through the darkness
Nor gestures valuing the hushed reach
Of what was meant to happen.
Not even will lips nipple
At prayers or numbers
Nor at hymns of delayed words
Like broth unpunctually asleep.

Will someone rise
At dawn and cross
A town smelling of bowels
Loaded with failures
And grasp a call
Wherever the moan of transactions
Is heard?

There, where this other order’s song
Will throw its breath,

For it is due now.

Within secondary streets.

Where black gifts burst
And a smell from helpless dinners
Falls off façades.

The mist
Will spare us the stare, will leave a yearning
In our hands and a humid balance
Of white ailments in our mouth.

There’ll be no conditions
Nor will agreements pass their resigned
Tongue
Over our heads.
No one will give out
Funereal verbiage.

And all will be at dusk,
When the sky draws back its baked
Colours
And there are hardly any boasts
In the conversations
Of those first wakeful ones.

Then,
When the last frailty chases
After backyard
Geraniums
And the final, evening girls
Move along with belated fear,

There,

Like someone who finds true coins
Among the littered puddles of a party,

There shall we receive the message.

                                    (a hymn dream)

It will be like reaching the pavilions
Of grace, once sown with bubbles
Of boiling gold and essential fruits.
We shall part
With oily torches from the markets,
We shall be legion inflaming dry springs
And the roots’ tormented pulse.
A strange night will be, a burning night will be
With heavens loaded with stars and blazing insects
Above our heads; it will be just one night
And we mounting,
                                    And we mounting...
Mounting
From all the world’s cities, leaving behind
Inscriptions, terraces, machinery conducts
And contracts and peaceable metals,
And the numeral temperature From unhappy designations...
And up there,
                                    Far above,
Where wicker does not frighten,
Where snow leaves its rebellious coins,
High up we shall camp with songs
And gestures nobody will hold. Angels will visit
The music from bonfires, will fall with sudden cold
Of their wings upon liquors and stews
Of redemption.
                                    And nobody will ever
be afraid and a girl will pour
The perfume of oblivion over the last flames,
Before the dawn spiders find
The banquet of our dreams, the hot concoction
Of diversity.

And so, with neither rows nor speeches
Nor measured gait
Others will arrive: their tread wide awake, their look again
With the fire of invitations.
As we proceed, the air may burn
And trees will throw unexpected birds.
All will be left behind: the cities’
Far wave, the cold of courts, the freezing
Blackboards’ darkness, the commercial warmth
That marriages give, the noise of clinics
And censuses.
Only to a clap have we listened
Unique and universal
Which set us in motion to found the air
So empty of childhood yet, so full
Of lies and cysts
Strange like a disastrous occupation
(cynical chemical crimes; acid atlantic hymns ¹
Somebody already announced
Under the dread of this very music
With those other initial words).

The time has come. Let’s show
Our irritations.
Some should be called to account,
But when shall we do it? On our back we shall follow,
Among animals of fameless
Smile.
There won’t be ages, races, duties.
Just idle fire
Will grow within our eyes.

And when, at last, we reach
A haven
Bright as the light of lemons and spread
Like an open body, from waiting ancient
But still burning,
We shall keep our voice, stop
Our pulse, notice the hardened depth
Of our bones,
And domes and stages,
Medals’ remote value,
And the bandages’ cold and the saliva
Destined every morning to lie will tremble,

When from so much gathered silence
The music of the weak Rises to the brim.