Los viejos / Juan Sánchez Peláez

Old People

I don’t know if old people live the immediate
I know they want to escape
like drunkards
and that
crouching
or standing
they arrive differently
and show up on time
for the great appointment
at a sea
on the edge of the sea

they don’t sleep either
nor are they alone
and yet
they always find themselves
they are always there
they wait calmly
drinking goat’s milk
in ample
corridors
just above the rooftops
in a village that
belongs to the moon
or in a hotel in Liverpool

nothing exists but instants
don’t come and contradict me
my dear, vain
thoughts
there is
the surplus
our lack
and
worry

what you long for
what burns
is young
and is antique
but
no mother speaks to us anymore
except
mother-fucking death
who eats
thrushes          thresholds
red cherries in the patio

old people would sing
but they occupy a foreign name
without a place on the map or in the
geography

so when they weigh me and
slit my throat
because of time
I too belong to another route
I step forward
I test north with my nape
and I am assaulted below
or amid
the water that springs thirst
by the vigilant spirit
of the old people
who
retrace the enormous curtain
or
want to scale
the wall
hiccuping furiously
guttural or natural
the successive jolts of an actual
verified
story
that happened

they would speak or sing then
if they had a vocal timbre
to make the name human for us.




Aire sobre el aire (1989)




{ Juan Sánchez Peláez, Obra poética, Barcelona: Editorial Lumen, 2004 }