XVI / Manón Kübler

XVI

we were a secret squad that year, a retinue of men and women with the character of astronauts or teachers. a mysterious confederacy, a brotherhood of daily communions, the die cast, the apology or the peculiarity overwhelmed in ordinary and pathetic states of being. we wanted to grow with the glory of hardcover editions, magic biographies. we belonged to the frugal readings of borges, to reverón’s paintings, to russian cinema, to polish theater. we aspired to the names another might find perpetuated in eminent figures, on some city wall, in some mysterious and damp newspaper. we made no man’s land in the city of commons; we engendered repeated anecdotes in cafes that disappeared a hundred years ago, with the death of their tongues, perhaps. we deposited credits and tributes in prophets of “culture” with poor mouths because we were an excess of frozen ideas, of insipid gestures accompanied by citations. the baroque standing with artaud and freud walking hand in hand, it was said. we were undoubtedly inclined toward vanguards, a mockery of the true center, periphery of nothingness, for an episode of efforts and leaps, a spitting in the face of the anonymous who make their ideas collapse in the ministries and in managements. we nourished a lexicon of spent and unknown words. we were the fashion and have already passed.




{ Manón Kübler, Olympia, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1992 }

IV / Manón Kübler

IV

i suppose today’s risky ascent through the inveterate walls of euphoria will soon lead me to an indescribable abyss. let’s say this is of no importance to the degree that you and i might be able to waste the creature of lack, as would be done in the best german poetry, where indolence ends up being a form of doubt and tragedy for the most immune of men. i lament being so distressingly moral and expecting that i must say so much to you in order to touch just one of your breasts.




{ Manón Kübler, Olympia, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1992 }

II / Manón Kübler

II

i no longer am. i disappear in the confines of this room. alone, postponed, in the absurd belief of the child. foreseeing a threat that might keep me in mind. diminished. abrupt in the implements of doubt. as though tomorrow were to provide me a more intense health. but i’m an old woman in this room. i’m covered by the platonic response to suicides. i know nothing about myself even though i find myself again every day.




{ Manón Kübler, Olympia, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1992 }

I / Manón Kübler

I

let us you and i take a long journey through the house of the living. of those exemplars who, well conserved ask about you and me. let us pause along the way on your bed so as to know ourselves alive, that we are the part that looks like the rough lines of night, the ones we don’t see, the ones we won’t ever try. give me the part of your body, that shore no one knows, not even the intimacies of your bathroom nor the discreet modesty of your mirror. i want to sleep with you at this hour so i know i have you beneath my hand, knees on your kidney, your back divided.




{ Manón Kübler, Olympia, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1992 }

XXIV / Manón Kübler

XXIV

now i know i won’t die tonight. if i pass by and go over lost amid splendors and beings i find myself in the form of the mirror that separates my neck from others. if climbing up intricate stairs and sustained by railings i have lived while falling now i know i won’t die tonight and it’s because i rest on the empty side of the bed, repeated side that i name in lower case letters, and number, and complained it goes in texts and i understand the void will continue even with the solid shadow of a beautiful girl resting. now i know. the extended hand seeking itself in the aridity in the lack bursting with that voice that stains the souls of children when i name and where you find the reigned space your children cover and where the dream is dictated while i wrote. and i know i don’t take control of the trigger because it’s not my voice that says goodbye for good to the fetishes i use to decorate my ideas, tonight which won’t be the last even if i want it to be and i feel like a demon with its slight cough and with the arrhythmia of my arms i perch on the machine for the lifting of the complaint nearly dead because i know this night is not.




{ Manón Kübler, Olympia, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1992 }

III / Manón Kübler

III

i am done with the drama, i suffer from a lack, from the brutal and mute howl at midnight, from insomnia, from debt, from the rigor coming through the windows or the age. i no longer have any crude stories that deserve to be told, i am unmoved by miserly forms and cold bodies. indifference called off its delicious game of killing me. i am evaporated of all passions. i went from agonized existence to the support of the bed, to the lifted feet of repose. i notice my transformations: women don’t scratch me their memories don’t dig into me when i get home, happy to have a house without dreaming of failure without aspiring to what is irrevocable to the abyss to the inert arms, forever inert on a mistreated body. i am not whipped by my philistine comments nor am i wounded by languages. my tongue’s magnifying glass doesn’t lose its composure over invented bodies it doesn’t seduce it doesn’t adore. i notice with horror, without bravery, that i am beginning to be happy.




{ Manón Kübler, Olympia, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1992 }