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 }

El camino / Enrique Molina

The Road

Sometimes the road arrives
converted into demented suns
Or wets its mouth with rain
Or passes clenching its teeth

But it comes with its wounds
Its avid hand strangles
And its errant mouth is stained
With adventure’s laughter

The distant calls of those people
Plotting with the wind
Sullied by the wine of trains
With landscapes in movement

I open the door and the wind moves
A wave enters with its fruit
The dunes enter with a bone
A hand with quick fingers

There are women between the cracks
The white sponge of the moon
Remote breasts like lakes
Passions in dark lands

Ardor thirst vortex
Always fleeing the instantaneous
Its mechanics is flame
Those lips never stop

People born without borders
Tangled in absence
Disdainfully dressed
In feathers and weeds

Characters whose silhouette
Is left with knife marks
Thrown like lightning
In the storm’s circus

Long torch vibratile earth
Caress with no price or pity
Houses suddenly flee
And in their place, a letter

Blood forgets its habits:
Weight sleep fear mourning
The road takes the form
Of everything in the world

Arrogant birds peck
The heart of churches
Its voice reveals to insomniacs
The most beautiful heresies

But the road is a flavor
Snatched from life itself
Let others keep their head:
A pen decapitates me




Fuego libre (1962)




{ Enrique Molina | Argentina, 1910-1997 }

Aire en México / Enrique Molina

Air in Mexico

I have woken under a bird’s feet, covered by an
       Indian blanket,
you could hear the distant bells and neighing.
Is this the last hotel? I’ve said to myself, lost in the cactus,
the people are very ancient, with masks of red earth,
horsemen covered in decorative mirrors, women
standing on the burning beaches of death.
I honor the gods with tequila and chili,
that sea shanty blows here between sugar skulls,
and suddenly so much jubilation in my heart,
the taste of idolatry, the taste for such stars,
       embroidered blouses, steeds,
and the skeleton orchestra making their bones rattle
       covered in punctured paper,
saying goodbye, saying goodbye once more.
Saying goodbye to this solar matter
where I suddenly wake up lost in my memory.




Los últimos soles (1980)




{ Enrique Molina | Argentina, 1910-1997 }

Cálida rueda / Enrique Molina

Warm Wheel

We’ll never be anything
The extinct fire won’t extinguish
Love revolves in its own ashes:
No kiss fades

Bodies loved from afar
And bodies nearby without bridges
The seagull of goodbyes
Immobilized in the current

Faces that pass but turn
—The beautiful human sunflower...—
That light that seems to be night
That night crowded with lighthouses

Because one time will be another time
And the universe is in my blood
Incited hearts
Oh serpents of the sun
                                    Insatiable!




Fuego libre (1962)




{ Enrique Molina | Argentina, 1910-1997 }

En ruta / Enrique Molina

En Route

How many days and how much shadow!
How many nights contaminated
By the memory of other nights
By the tattoo of other beaches!

There are wandering insomnia blocks
Huge serpents of laziness
Families invaded by weeds
Pale people who recede

How many black-winged trains
In the dementia of other skies!
How many fugitive plains
Like sand amidst your fingers!

There is sunrise with a bird
There is a burial with a priest
The letter no one reads
The hospice that escapes

Archaic mothers like a totem
Tending to a table of oblivion
Bread soaked by the waves
Unknown companions

And so many heads on fire
Captives of ancient history
Dazzling like the ocean
At the bottom of memory!

There is the wind with a feather
The lair without a caress
The summer’s golden sound
The breeze’s fresh wound

There is the hand made of stone and shade
That seeks the biggest roots
There is the man of dream and bone
With the moon of other countries

There is the one who turns his head
(Prisoner of the dead)
And the one who sees a woman from afar
When he glimpses the open door

And poor couples that love each other
On the astral weeds
Entwined beneath the shade
Under the shade of their arms

There are disappointed sand dunes
With black, sunken cities
Living basements that close up
Like enormous carnivorous flowers

And strange anxious meals
Of the Earth’s ardent hunger
Beautiful meals exalted
By the silence of stones

The savage farewell scream
Of the coast in the distance
A tortured lightning bolt
The splendor of ancient days

The mysterious burn
Of such light and such breath
With creatures who become absent
Masked by time

But I keep biting the leaves
Drinking wine and rain
Adoring that sun born
Of a woman disrobing

The sea returns a hero
Covered in flames and arrows
A blade burns and the chains
Of weeds fall apart

Lips like a river crossing
A body’s pure valleys
The raving of your hair
The nebulousness of your sex

(I belong to the tempest
I reclaim my species’ honor
The idolatry of my veins
My neglect amidst the current)




{ Enrique Molina | Argentina, 1910-1997 }