Mientras corren los grandes días / Enrique Molina

While the Great Days Run

An ancient terror burns in things, a profound and secret
    breath,
a proud and somber acid that fills the stones with big
    holes,
and makes the moist apples cruel, the trees the sun
    consecrated;
the rains interwoven with the long hair and its savage
    perfumes, its bland and undulating music;
the robes and vain objects; the tender dolorous wood in the
    tense violins
honored and submissive on the patient table, in the ill-fated
    coffin,
around which the impassive and just angels gather
    to collect their portion of death;
the plaster fruit and the intimate lamp where the sunset
    condenses itself,
and the dresses fall like a dry foliage at the foot of the
    woman undressing,
opening in quiet circles around her ankles, like a
    thick pond
on which the night flames and deepens, gathering that
    sumptuous body,
dragging the shadows after the crystals and the dreams after
    the sleeping aspects;
so that, beside the warm room, the desolate wind moans
    under the leaves of ivy.

Oh time! Oh, pale vines! Oh, sacred fatigue of living!
Oh, sterile brightness that fights in my flesh! Your pure
    threads crawl along my bones,
your soft undulating foam wrapping around my vertebrae.
And thus, through the placid faces, of the invariable turning
    of Summer,
through the immobile and meek furniture, of the songs
    of cheerful splendor,
everything speaks to the absorbed and defenseless witness, to
    the hindermost crawling shadows,
of their uncertain departure, of the hands transforming
    themselves on the estival lawn.

Then my heart full of idolatry wakes up trembling, like he
who dreams that the shadow enters him and his adorable
    flesh is liquified
to a slow and sweet song, populated by floating animals and
    fog
and passes the tips of his fingers along his eyebrows, confirms
    his lips anew and looks at his deserted knees again,
caressing around his wealth, without penetrating its secret,
while the great days run along the immutable earth.




Las cosas y el delirio (1941)




{ Enrique Molina | Argentina, 1910-1997 }