dejar este simulacro de cuerpo que somos?
Está sombra animal rabioso que acompaña. ¿Dónde dejarla?
Sé que ensayo una despedida.
Oficio en la fuga. Lo sé.
¿Por qué no puedes verlo?
Pensaba yo que todo era la vida:
estos claros de bosque,
estos cuerpos calcinados,
estos labios que beso con pasión,
esta locura de andar en parques en la tarde,
estos niños que avanzan hacia mataderos familiares,
no son la vida.
¿Por qué no puedes entenderlo?
Sin atributos, sí. Es cierto.
A merced de qué como una hoja.
¿Quién irá por mí a esos sitios del dolor?
¿Quién extenderá las manos,
pondrá su pecho, dará la espalda,
cerrará los ojos, pensará:
“Pronto los dedos apretarán
el gatillo, y yo abriré los ojos para ver
cómo descargan contra mí
sin saber qué haré después”?
I, TOO, AM ULRICH
after The Man without Qualities by Robert Musil
Without attributes
(tempted to say without qualities),
I am the dead man
who gazes at death
without recognizing it:
death, a circle small
and dreadful,
that burning circle,
flickering,
almost unseen,
revealing
(all at once)
every face
and every thing
I’ve loved passionately
and transiently,
or so it seems.
Without attributes, which is to say,
without grasping at salvation,
without a love story
triumphant at the end of days,
without a light
to cross that shadowed room
where the boy I was
weeps and bleeds and begs and screams
don’t leave me alone
don’t leave me alone
don’t leave me alone
and I,
not knowing what to do,
cannot save him,
and go laughing into the gas chamber.
That’s right. I laugh.
Who will stop me,
I, who laugh in a gas chamber?
No. You can do nothing to me.
You can do nothing. Understand that.
I have no throat to slit;
my life is left behind,
far away,
so far away,
like those tiny figures drawing close,
so slowly,
in a landscape out of memory.
I am my own incest.
Didn’t you know every act of love is a suicide?
Come. Put your finger to my lips.
Strange gesture to silence words.
Mute gesture, as if we swallow sweet poison.
Why are you shocked at my laughter?
Where to cast off this sham of a body, a self?
It is a rabid shadow-animal that walks beside. Where to leave it?
I know I’m practicing my farewell.
Mid-escape, I give notice. I know.
Why can’t you see?
I thought all this was life:
these forest clearings,
these charred bodies,
these lips I kiss with passion,
this craze for twilight walks in the park,
these children who go to slaughtered families,
these are not life.
Why can’t you understand?
Without attributes, yes. It’s true.
At the mercy of all things, like a leaf.
Who will go to these places of pain for me?
Who will hold out his hands,
bring them to his chest, turn his back,
close his eyes, and think:
“Soon their fingers will pull
the trigger, and I will open my eyes to see
how they have fired on me,
not knowing what I’ll do next”?
