El espectro / Rafael Cadenas

The Specter

You’re not there
when the glance stops
on a stone, a face, a bird,

in a suspension
with no waiting,

in that being
intense,

in that clearing
at the margins of comedy.

You show up afterwards
with your sad retinue.










Finished mud,
durable anguish
and oblique light.

Not the end of the specter
(stronger than the flame).

Agony of not being empty.










When he departs
his place is occupied
by a calmness.

Bonfire with no other men
only presences.










The mistake
isn’t so much yours.
Like the face
or a hand
or a bone.
Profound,
delicate,
remote,
within,
we drink the wine that touches us.










I’m not what I wear
but the recipient.
Place of the presence,
place of emptiness.

I receive, I give,
I prepare.
Me
or someone
I don’t know?














You don’t live from a name,
nor with answers,
nor on a single side.

It’s meager
the piece of land
you’ve chosen for yourself.










To live
in being’s flavor,
taken.
Reduced
to who completes a burning invasion.










One moment separated from all other moments
has been waiting for you beyond the years for years.










Nothing.
Droughts.
Nor dark news.

Nothing.
The old sentence.

And of course the days,
so terrestrial,
nothing.










Life
without apex.
A weight
is whoever lives it,
not me
it’s not even
made to be felt.










Nothing is plain between us,
the most divided.
Not even suffering.

Mirrors that face each other
dividing themselves.









I plunge my hands
into the water
of a creek;
looking for what I lost,
this is it:
nothing.










Thought drags itself as if drowned.
Today’s strong tide that sweeps the disarmed coasts
where clean days grow mute
(their assaulted ken
has no weight).
Far over there the clean line.
Days in which I live like a strange plantation.
Quiet, quiet, don’t wake the elders.










Life,
turn us into,
dissolve us in a new style,
make our breathing the absolute bellows.










Attention,
magic phial,
nectar of being present.










The country we won’t reach
extends
within our grasp.

Nothing interposes itself,
but like rich travelers
we’ve extended the trajectory.










The trip,
a blind man’s
pilgrimage.
Has nowhere.

It’s here
each moment
final!

Don’t you hear
the last bird?










I know
that if I don’t become no one
I will have wasted my life.










Surviving
calm.
I have nothing
to provide you
praise.
You come and go
at your taste.










From a silence
will come the answer,
the glowing honesty.




Memorial (1977)




{ Rafael Cadenas, Obra entera, México DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2000 }