Aproximaciones / Rafael Cadenas

Approximations

(Rifiuto)

I stepped aside
(simplifying labyrinths
with a no)
but now rejection
has a burning lucidity:
it’s the only path.










You live under skin.
You ignore
that being
means: reachable.










It grows
the desire to see your face,

your face without me.










I follow the strange
inference
of life.

Flame that turns into novelty
whatever it touches.
Like a child’s hand.










Everything flows,
and he who contains
is merely he who contains.










The unseen face
is my face.










My life
learns
to ask for nothing.










They will call you to the plaza of distortion.

Disregard all the voices.
Live with the burning logic.
Return to where you still don’t begin.

Like a flaming space that empties itself always.
In the trembling of being only vacant life.










I am this vigilance.

I am this vacillating readiness,
this absence of face,
this faded color.

I am the one in whom
even the idea of man is extinguished.










Life,
reduce me to being
only a crudeness facing you.










Memorial (1977)




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