Confesiones de un papelero estrafalario / Víctor Valera Mora

Confessions of an Eccentric Stationer

                                                  to old Caupo, to Elí and Aquiles

I confess my already famous stubbornness
will allow me to one day
lead the motherland of papers through the desert

I confess my discredit has no limits
that I am disdainful in how I dress
what you might call a fashion disaster

I confess I enjoy spending time
with old indictments and my friends
and songs that soothe the soul
and drinks and matters of the heart
and not hanging onto a tie rack weeping

I confess the novel walks faster than poetry
but doesn’t reach as far
that in my first million years
of posterity I’ll be called
the impeccable gentleman of darkness

*

Confesiones de un papelero estrafalario

                                                  al viejo Caupo, a Elí y Aquiles

Confieso que mi ya famosa terquedad
ha de permitirme un día
conducir la patria de papeles por un desierto

Confieso que me desprestigio no tiene límites
que soy desdeñoso en el vestir
lo que se dice un desastre de la moda

Confieso que me gusta estar
entre mis viejos alegatos y los amigos
y las canciones que dan en el alma
y los tragos y los asuntos del corazón
y no colgar deshecho en llanto de una viga de corbatas

Confieso que la novela camina más rápido que la poesía
pero no llega tan lejos
que en mi primer millón de años
de posteridad seré llamado
el impecable caballero de las tinieblas




70 poemas stalinistas (1979)




{ Víctor Valera Mora, Obras completas, Caracas: Fondo Editorial Fundarte, 1994 }

Roma /10/1/73 / Víctor Valera Mora

Rome /1/10/73

This cigarette butt
This little bit of ground coffee
This cherry yogurt
These few grains of salt
This fistful
These chamomile flowers
These grains of rice
This ration of semolina pasta
These two fingers of olive oil
This piece of old bread
This chunk of parmesan cheese
That rose in the waters of the Aniene
This bronchial roar
This cold that digs in
This anger that infected me last night
because of the Roman girl’s treachery
These knives

*

Roma /10/1/73

Esta colilla de cigarrillo
Este poquito de café en polvo
Este yogurt de cerezas
Estos contados granos de sal
Este puñado
Estas flores de manzanilla
Estos granos de arroz
Esta ración de pasta de sémola
Estos dos dedos de aceite de oliva
Este pedazo de pan viejo
Este trocito de queso parmesano
Esa rosa en las aguas del Aniene
Este rugido bronquial
Este frío que cala hondo
Esta arrechera cogida anoche
por culpa de la malinche romana
Estas navajas




70 poemas stalinistas (1979)




{ Víctor Valera Mora, Obras completas, Caracas: Fondo Editorial Fundarte, 1994 }

A mi tos no hay lana que la cubra / José Barroeta

There’s No Wool To Cover My Cough

                                                  To Víctor Valera Mora

There’s no wool to cover my cough.
I’m so scared, father, that I wait
for a glass of water alone.
October’s desire to take me has passed,
but I’m scared.
The beast calls me,
my own,
the one I contained so much.
What I thought to leave in spirit
became body
and life indulges me so much
that night still falls.
When the fruit of my town drops
they’re my owners,
I’ve done nothing to keep them
in my heart.
Father, I have a great fright,
tell my mother about it as you touch
her pillow.
Tell her they stole my partridge
and the fig,
the September shade I treated
so poorly.
I can’t do it father.
My sister lives like a chicken
and I want her feathers;
I can’t stand
so much love in her belly.
My thirst for the old places
suffers a fable.
You and I, father,
made appointments in the forests.
Before showing up we imposed silence.




El arte de anochecer (1975)




{ José Barroeta, Todos han muerto: Poesía completa (1971-2006), Barcelona: Editorial Candaya, 2006 }

Oficio de poeta / Víctor Valera Mora

Poet’s Task

                                                            To Ismael Medina

Ethical is the poet’s path on this earth
though not the one who puts an index finger to his lips
but rather in the tremendous and dazzling
glow of freedom and revolt
because you can’t be happy
when you breathe
amidst a bunch of wretches
you have to live aggressively
vindicate the whetstone
for when the time comes
for the fierce and beautiful feast of knives




70 poemas stalinistas (1979)




{ Víctor Valera Mora, Obras completas, Caracas: Fondo Editorial Fundarte, 1994 }

Por aquí pasó Beny Moré / Víctor Valera Mora

Beny Moré Was Here

     Beny Moré was here
and he set fire
to Beethoven to Mozart to Vivaldi
the Beatles were saved because they spoke
for a while about something like the fall of a kingdom
Beny Moré was here
more of a hurricane than the glory to the brave people
our poor song from 1811




Amanecí de bala (1971)




{ Víctor Valera Mora, Obras completas, Caracas: Fondo Editorial Fundarte, 1994 }

Amanecí de bala / Víctor Valera Mora

I Woke Up to Bullets

     I woke up to bullets
I woke up well magnificently well all surly
today I won’t change a second of my life for a red flag
I would change my whole life for that woman’s hair
tall and blonde when I go to the School of Pharmacy I’ll tell her
I’ll definitely tell her a matter of mine to wake up like this
this morning when I opened the doors with the first gust
stirring knocking everything over my lungs were filled
by the other poets of the Lautréamont gang
great gentlemen barely tolerated by their women
I ask the most frenetic one about his book vagancia city
how I love to complicate my friends I name them all the time
the devil won’t take me alone
she used to be called Frida and she lived in Bavaria
in a house made of big rocks lifted by her Viking lover
her follies in the Sargasso Sea
there’s sun until dawn and I think I’ll never die
and yet I want this day to survive me
I’m disproportionate or excessive and I don’t give anyone advice
but today I can see more clearly than ever and I want everyone else to participate
beautiful day you extol me unbridled happiness
I have no commerce with death I don’t fear it
I carry the life of each day in my blood I am of this world
good like a child implacable like a child
I maintain a steel faithfulness to my childhood dreams
in this point I am Socratic he and I fly kites
we restore the golden age the “what will there be” at the end of the suspended arc
just now a river is moving
there’s a dark-skinned woman of aggressive beauty she told me but you’re so cute
so then I told her doesn’t it happen every two thousand years I lose the thread
day of advent of crazy combat of love at high temperatures
naked we sink into the waters of the same river




Amanecí de bala (1971)




{ Víctor Valera Mora, Obras completas, Caracas: Fondo Editorial Fundarte, 1994 }

Relación para un amor llamado amanecer / Víctor Valera Mora

Relation for A Love Called Sunrise

In the spiral galaxy of Andromeda there exists
a florid planet where the rivers don’t drown the sea
where fire and ice burn the contradictions
Where there’s no need for return
Where 0 x 0 is more than infinity
Where the cardinal points are more than a hundred million
North and Lia South and Símbalo Lavender and Araceli
Michael and Adrianne Orpheus and Atabal Cedar and Valkyrie
Mystery and Prodigious Neon and Rose Arcilia Asphalt and Dionysius
Antonio and Elena my poor parents Viceroys of the Indies
My trip to Eastern Europe and East Oleander and Clavichord
Where everyone lives in ecstasy
Where nothing and no one is vile
Where the sun is a ring and wedding ritual
where we are flashes of light and we move in whistles
A clean and polished planet
Where lovers live in floating palaces
Where God has a poorly-attended newspaper stand and he kills time
talking about the past with Buddha and Mohammed and the fruit seller
from the corner and people already know them and people when they pass say
“those four good-for-nothings are some cool motherfuckers”
Where the son of God and the angels of ease
drink the air of the avenues on their frenetic motorcycles
Where there are no military academies or police or jails or coins
Where we are wise Where we are good
Where the last insidious ones
escaped through a tunnel and fell into a vacuum
Paradisiacal star beloved and defended
by sharpshooters and poets
Where death is under the weather
Where the men are kind
Where the women are hyacinth branches
with lips and eyes that change colors
A moderato cantabile star
Where the night is wine and happiness until sunrise
Its capital is a resplendent city called Estefanía
Where you have dominion Where you are queen
That planet is my wandering heart




Amanecí de bala (1971)




{ Víctor Valera Mora, Obras completas, Caracas: Fondo Editorial Fundarte, 1994 }

Oficio puro / Víctor Valera Mora

Pure Task

How does a woman who has just made love walk
What does a woman who has just made love think about
How does she see other people’s faces and how do they see her face
What is the color of the skin of a woman who has just made love
How does a woman who has just made love sit down
She’ll greet her friends
She’ll think it’s snowing in other countries
She’ll light and consume a cigarette
Naked in the bathroom she’ll turn
the cold water spigot or the hot water spigot
She’ll turn both of them at once
How will a woman who has just made love kneel
She’ll dream that happiness is a journey by boat
She’ll return to childhood or beyond childhood
She’ll cross rivers mountains plains domestic nights

She’ll sleep with the sun in her eyes
She’ll wake up sad happy dizzy
Beautiful body of a woman
that was neither docile nor friendly nor wise




Amanecí de bala (1971)




{ Víctor Valera Mora, Obras completas, Caracas: Fondo Editorial Fundarte, 1994 }

Comienzo / Víctor Valera Mora

Beginning

The class struggle. The great monopoly imperialists.
The cursed stumps of the generation of 28
who have inflicted so much harm upon us.
The policeman in the park, the lovers exist
in the possibility of initiating terrorism.
The memory coming from the plains, horse
crying recommenced blood. Sad matter.
This issue of carrying a guitar under your arm.
The freedom to doubly die of hunger.
Achilles the shield bearer of tenderness
has lately hurt himself so hard in the soul.
This forces us to speak
the most terrible of languages.
To make of poetry an angry rifle, implacable
until it becomes beautiful.
There is no other alternative,
the collapse of a popular fighter
is more painful than the collapse
of all the images.
When the people take power, we’ll see what to do,
meanwhile let’s keep doing our thing.




Canción del soldado justo (1961)




{ Víctor Valera Mora, Obras completas, Caracas: Fondo Editorial Fundarte, 1994 }

Té de manzanilla / Miyó Vestrini

Chamomile Tea

My friend,
el chino,
wrote once about how women sit
and walk
after they’ve made love.
We never got to argue the point
because he died like a fool,
victim of a cardiac arrest cured with camomille tea.
Had we done so,
I would have told him that the only good thing about making love
are the men who ejaculate
without resentment,
without fear.
And that after doing it,
no one wants to sit down
or walk.
I named an old African palm tree planted
next to the pool at my apartment after him.
Each time I have a drink,
and I greet him,
he shakes his leaves terribly,
a sign that he’s furious.
He told me once:
one’s life is an immense happiness
or an immense anger.
I’m faithful to my childhood dreams.
I believe in what I do,
in what my friends do,
and in what everyone who’s like me does.

Sometimes we’re alone
until very late,
talking about the worms that harass him
and the terrible heat he feels every day
in that sand and dryness.
He hasn’t changed:
starving,
dispossessed,
he can sit down and befriend Mallarmé.
Lautréamont accompanied us one night
and said el chino was right:
poetry should be made by everyone.
And the others arrived:
Rubén Darío leading in Nicaragua,
Omar Khayyam with his festivities,
Paul Éluard bring pairs of lovers together.
Between all of us,
we submerged el chino in the pool, under the full moon,
and he was happy
like when he had a river,
some birds,
a kite.

Now he’s pissed off again,
because people bring him flowers
while he’s trying to scare off the cockroaches.
He wanted to be buried in Helsinki,
under eternal snows.
He went around the world,
passing through London where a woman waited for him,
and on his way back,
he drank camomille tea.
He,
who loved the shadows so much,
could no loner stay up all night.
Lucid and very hypocritical,
he had a horrible fear of dying in bed.
I know,
because he wrote me on a little piece of paper,
that the phrase he liked most was by David Cooper:
the bed is the laboratory of sleep and love.




Valiente ciudadano (1994)




{ Miyó Vestrini, Todos los poemas, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1994 }

Masseratti 3 litros / Víctor Valera Mora

3 Liter Masseratti

At six hundred kilometers per hour I question everything
I have neither peace nor calm and I say question everything
I let myself be taken I like everything that happens to me
the animal I am atop cathedrals sniffing
my excessive ease my savage mouth
opening and closing frightening doors
the micromachine that films dreams
a stairwell a torch to burn the new Babylon
I assault the circle from above from below
tonight I will sleep on the rooftop tiles so as to not compromise anyone
and on the way I piss in the writers’ park
we conduct ourselves within and without
January without a turtleneck sweater is full of conflict
nothing falls by its own weight except misfortune
at this speed I’m the only one
who has seen the distance and the immediacy of disorder
I know such deities that it makes me laugh
so thus we have the man without a hat and who needed
to work with a hat and went out into the street with his naked woman
on his head and at the bus stop he ran into his best friend
who asked him
“that’s not Eloísa!” and he said
“yeah but I don’t think it’s too obvious” and his best friend answered
“well actually not too much”
and when he entered the office everything blew up and afterward
it became habitual and at a certain point in time
he got someone to make a few repairs in those places
where they make buckles and fix hats and they lined her
all inside with red taffeta and they circled her waist
with a brilliant ribbon
and you don’t say decorated with exotic bird feathers
because it’s a serious matter as I should know and the need was such
that it was forgotten
and he left his woman hanging from a little nail and took off
like any hallucinating man with any self-worth I am hopeless
what we haven’t seen yet is an elephant cemetery
nor a ghost ship nor the consecration of spring
I’m all about a three liter masseratti
a potent machine
an agonizing agony of turbines
better yet if it brings along the sonnets to Orpheus
how long does it take to write a great poem
to then inscribe it in posterity’s grand prix
I couldn’t care less about those who are anxious for time not to kill them
I wear my jacket backwards and walk on whistling
notice I said jacket
and I said straitjacket and I said insulin and I said metrasol
but don’t notice I didn’t say occupational therapy or crooked rooster
what we still haven’t seen is not my rabid jealousy
nor the manuals of econometry for business managers
we need directional bars and axle points
high octane and battery acid
I was telling Cecilia that no world of water
was an obstacle for those long and beautiful legs of hers
we need nuts and bolts fine coils
clear platinums and resistant cranks
throw the academic nettle eaters into the cold
now is when Che is about to really wage war
we need to dress ourselves in mountain
insurgent or dead without memory
swallow me with beer my love I’m an oyster
blood of my blood
love beneath the inventory of your eyes
love without understanding that two are enough for closeness
love you have to put the least strange papers in order
and take the plane at the lost paradise terminals
love whom I look at with the right-hand sun to fly without return
in the soluble wind
Old man Orígenes considered
that we would enter rolling in the form of a sphere
my problem is something else what is poetry for
all yankees are sons of bitches
we have to kill them wherever they might be
I can’t live without conflict
this morning I woke up desperately in love with North Korea
I want a nuclear explosion
we have worked too hard for the gods
under the radiance of the mushroom we will make them work
even faster I throw the house through the window
the wise penologist says the verb to make is limitless
we can sing dance write read
and also steal cheat rape offend
that’s what we’re doing my children
I turn women into weapons of war
and then they decide vertiginously
the commander entered through the northeast coast
my favorite drink is one part
vodka with one part gin a dash of lemon
I can break my teeth on this pamphlet
my life is worth nothing
I like everything voraciously
my face drives the landscape crazy
I celebrate myself in poetry
like someone who celebrates their wedding with a knife
this was said this was sustained
everyone is the absence of all subjects
I am submerged
it costs a lot to maintain a vulture
to explain with certainty
how the future will come to your lives
to say to predict to go even deeper
the infinite always naked
my heart is more luminous
than all the suns swallowed by the earth
We won’t go to the movies to see the life of god’s lamb
it’s obvious he was born in isnotú in the state of trujillo
and since one is also from that state
and what the hell is that man doing here
I’m enervated by the chauvinism of the great village
hey! guerrillas
verb tenses don’t matter at all
according to what we’ve weighed seen and measured
terrible days will come
whoever plans on crying like a blessed creature
let him start
me inside the bubble I dance pata pata
today I received a letter from my love my love is about to arrive
I write big sticks because this agony doesn’t belong to today
this agony is not the daughter or the patrimony of liberated weapons
venezuelan death was already without us
dumb death
death without papers without pay without complaint
death the masts and spars of the powerful
old habit with bad habits
enormous turkey buzzard devouring the poor alive
pride what no one can deny us
is the irresistible transcendence from our falling
and the enemy’s violent death
we learned how to kill a leap forward
we talk for a long time about the pituitary gland
that unknown tyrant sitting in our turkish chair
we have to throw him out so that there be total confusion
the problem is finding the door filling the room with water
even if while doing that we depart from order sub-order species
the dwelling of the old lineage
we must deepen so as to continue
don’t forget I cross the labyrinth at six hundred kilometers
the square root of a ray of light plus all dreams
we are unhinged but even this is not stupid of us
that’s why I said critically
what we still haven’t seen is the country rotating madly
I am at my task
who can rest on the edge of a blade
a barrel of gunpowder is a barrel of gunpowder
of course the experts will say what else could it be
what I’m talking about is where can we find one so we can blow up the established codes
one gets entangled in each fiasco of fear this doesn’t provide dividends
I live in the same place how many would want to see me dressed in wood
today we are open air but tomorrow
the man bent his waist forward
his left eye rolled on the ground without flinching
I mean the man was unflinching not the eye that would be something
then grabbing it carefully he put it back in place
at that instant he died of fright it was backwards he saw himself from within
if you want history make it yourself
urgently we still need directional bars
the most radiant new years news
the vietcong commandos take the offensive
they want something more
for endless amounts of people a lamb chop
or veal or milk about two and a half kilograms
60 cloves of garlic 1 glass of rum
2 tenths of a liter of very sweet white wine
a bit of pork fat salt and pepper
if we begin at sunrise by sunset the fire will be ready
surrounding the most terrible chess board
they will dine on something that has been rolling our way for centuries
leg of ham in garlic in the style of Heraclitus of Ephese
then we’ll have trout in red wine the reddest
served under the radiance of our flags
we live in constant combat
let each person choose their destiny
a man walks giving and receiving blows
behind him he leaves semantics and the duties of a citizen
water and fish at the same time
he destroys the possible so as to not be annihilated
he forces us to carry pistol vapors on our napes
may no one sleep peacefully
oh that love of his for the war of the masses
offended you will say this is not a poem
and you’re right maybe it’s a lullaby
now I know I’m completely crazy
but the litany is done the joke is done
beginning with me the word is a shiver
there you have this
I climb in and start up my potent 3 liter masseratti
bursting I smash my brains into a wall
then the other hell

                                                                                     Mérida, 1968




Amanecí de bala (1971)




{ Víctor Valera Mora, Obras completas, Caracas: Fondo Editorial Fundarte, 1994 }