In This Crowd Of Sad And Lonely People

In this crowd of sad and lonely people
I too am sad and lonely
Groping my way through the affluent bazaar of the illusions of Europe
It’s difficult to get home from here
In the twentienth century
Because the poor-rich crowd at home is
Desperately struggling to reach here
The sooner the better

Sooner or later our own kids too
Will start playing in loneliness
In the near future they’ll start working and earning
If they’re even more capable they will
Go and settle down in Europe or America
They’ll work day and night
Constantly buy new things
If they feel sad or lonely
They’ll resort to psychotherapy
They’ll fight
Get divorced
They’ll seek alternatives to sexual pleasure
They’ll find treatments to satisfy intellectual hunger
They’ll follow ways to repress emotion
Where’s the courage left for human beings to celebrate
Their poverty now?
The time of human beings is already over



At The Height Of The Night In The Dazzling Bathroom

At the height of the night in the dazzling bathroom
Sparkling water pours into the tub like a waterfall
Both the faucets of the sink gurgling
Both the mirrors brightly glittering

The lights blaze, a medicinal odour fills
The nostrils, the rubber of the slippers sticks to the feet.
How disturbed is the water!
If the veins were cut, silently, it’ll all be red.

We’re going to live till we die, whether it’s you or me,
After celebrating lovemaking in this naked
Fierce light starting the shower
Soaping and scrubbing the body clean.

Before returning to the bedroom once more,
Counting our organs on our fingers,
Wiping our bodies with towels, gargling our mouths,
Searching for our spectacles and contact lenses.

My mind like a sheet spotted once more
Will be beaten and rinsed all over again
Rhythmically as in a washing machine in your orgasm
Before the automatic control shuts off the whine.



The Fourth Brandenburg Concerto-3
In G Major:  Allegro, Andante, Presto

Luminous gardens of soluble notes :
Like skies shedding flowers while blossoming.
The tender sunrays of astonishing compassion,
Two flutes running through the bows of a violin,
We swirl in the middle of it,
A lotus closes up its petals around the bees
Humming upon it.

Later, on the path in the opened head, one walks
With melodious feet in ten directions---
The path that is bold and clear and red
The garden dissolves and in its place one sees
The original forest of God’s imagination
A vast complex untangled by a single simple law.

Again the flute, again the violin, again the same phrases,
Like a leitmotif: but with a changed face.
Now even the sky has become simple.
From the bowed strings the memories of the flutes
Arriving on the earth. Suddenly before the last chord
Sounds, the dual strum. Again the same phrase.



In September

In the park before me the trees in September
Trees of so many names like Silver Maple and Bur Oak
Suddenly smouldered with coloured leaves before the fall
Day after day the flocks of migratory birds flew away
Towards nature beyond the sight in the south
My window was lit every evening
Beyond my typewriter on the table used to be a sunset
Blank pages got filled with black letters
Later when it got dark beams of light scoured the highway
The whine of the airconditioner would never go away
Tassos Denegris would smoke a joint and write
Poems in Greek hour after hour
And Geraldo Cesar Hurtado laughing like a lunatic
Playing Strauss’s Zarathustra on his stereo
Phoned every half-an-hour to say that no greater poet than himself ever wrote in Spanish
Now at this age, and in this country, lying down alone,
What am I searching?



The Banyan Tree

I still dream of that banyan tree
Of which I am only an aerial root and branch
The tree circumambulated by
Generations of Savitri

Space cannot be captured by spreading branches
Soil cannot be appropriated by striking roots
Although every seed has a potential forest within it
There are billions of seeds that simply cannot  sprout

This is a spendthrift festival
Celebrated by the death of many Satyavanas
Yama blesses only Savitri

I still dream of that banyan tree
As though in a tiny seed a whole inverted forest grows
Proclaiming the counter-space of liberation
Against the will to sprout.



Lord Let It Rain Even In This Country

Lord let it rain even in this country
Where water smells of murder
Where sugarcane or jute is grown in a field of violence
Where, as long as You are, Lord, frustration is forbidden

Lord let it rain even in this country
Where society is cultivated by using human lives as fertilizer
Where victims have faith in You
And those that prey on them are Your avatars

Lord let it rain even in this country
Where famines bring fortunes to some
Where the machines of human concern never stop
Where compassion works overtime

Lord let it rain even in this country
For those who overeat here sing melodies
And those who starve accompany them
Where famine and plenty dwell happily together

Lord let it rain even in this country