(Translated from the Catalan by Ona Bantjes-Ràfols)
Joint Ceremony
Demigods hide
in our eardrums
so we will not see them.
Only if we delve into the cosmos
can we feel
the tremor caused
by their fear of discovery.
Open the portal
to stellar truth and tell me
what you see.
Sovereignty
Small things come in pairs.
Two eyes.
Two ears.
Two arms.
Two wrists.
Two elbows.
Two hands.
Two nipples.
Two legs.
Two ovaries.
Two testicles.
Two knees.
Two feet.
But death, death is so big
there can only be one.
Space-time
I speak the word universe aloud
and know that when you hear it you’ll notice the fascination
which overflowed while I wrote
you’ll hear the enigmas of the word collapsing my brain.
You’ll sense the frenetic register
of a heart rate and a breath shortened
by a revelation of the emptiness that fills,
that embraces dead zones.
Universe.
This is not science, this is pure mysticism
which cannot be documented
not with numbers
not with letters.
The stupidity of humans is enough to make you laugh
always asking ourselves questions.
Curse
I did not want a map.
I wanted a machete to take me
through the jungle, following the unconscious.
When they say too late,
are you sure they’re not exaggerating?
I found a little knife
and I think I could cut away the plants
that get into my eyes,
that obstruct my will,
that exalt contradictions.
Yes,
I did not want a map.
I wanted a God within everyone.
Buds
Between letter and letter
grows an abundance of grass
that I do not plan to cut.
Once again I unbury meanings,
tautening words by joining them.
See how I contemplate,
how my body stirs
only in the act of looking.
Stretching definitions
like someone stretching
their bones after waking.
Lengthening sleep
so the waves reach you
now that you are every house,
every pantry,
every nuclear bunker.
Stop repeating in a murmur
that you don’t want me
on the side of the bed
if I write like that, I can hear you.
Things are not what they seem,
but rather everything else.
(Translated from the Catalan by Arthur Rippendorf)
Hypertension
Pressure
has always been very high
in the level in which I come through.
Because if I do not risk I do not live
and if I do not live there is no sense in writing
and how can I live without writing?
Therefore pressure
has always been very high
in the level in which I come through,
because I want to write, and there is no sincere writing
without the writer’s head
exploding.
And this is why everything I do
is under pressure and brings up problems,
because problems
are movement, fighting, motor.
And this is why everything I do
is under pressure and brings up problems,
because problems are inspiration.
And living smoothly,
I let it for the others, because I want
to eat earth clods.
And the transparent armour,
I let if for the others to wear it, ‘cause I want
to smash
all my fingers in every door,
because I want to penetrate the tornado and turn over and over
and jump into a wild river
to be taken.
The probability of losing myself in every of these facts
has always been high in the level
in which I come through,
because if I want to write I have to live and not to worry
if my heart stops.
Effects
It’s not at night but evening,
during the blue hour, when ten thousand birds
in the edge of an electric cable
reach an agreement and keep the breath,
tighten their wings, their heartbeat
squeezed, the blood in their legs boiling
and they work out how many knots the wing’s got,
as if it were the first time, as if it were
the last one, and they keep repeating for themselves
we are
ready
ready
ready
to cut the sky and cross the continent.
The force of the impulse
reverberates the metallic threat,
slows down
for some seconds
the intensity
of bulbs.
Nobody knows why.
Adults
Counted:
51 secrets melted with the microscopic
stains of the pupils,
8 deceptions floating over the misty
surface of the tear gland,
14 lies retained on the rough layer
of the tongue, with the saliva,
27 sins hidden in the penumbra
that inhabits the intersection of flesh.
We are the brutality of the stick
driven by the blind who finds another
blind, and makes him fall.
The Evidence
A dress printed with seaweed
or some seaweed over a body
transformed into a dress, or even better,
skin camouflaged amongst the seaweed,
yes, skin camouflaged amongst
seaweed in the muddy sea, no,
floating, floating over the sea,
no, floating, floating over a
river, yes, floating, going down
the transparent river, yes,
the transparent river flowing within.
An unknown mystery floats in the air.
Infinite the caress which is yet to come.
Catharsis
The light goes out, I eat lightbulbs.
There are frogs jumping from my pockets.
It is raining outside and in.
There are waves in the bath.
There is a dark umbrella flying up into the sky.
From afar I would say it is a magpie.
The Pale Prayer
Unploughed earth,
that’s what we are.
Alone, alone, alone
after a sudden slap on the back
lost, disoriented,
crawling
on all fours
with the sound of cannons firing.
So much time brimming over.
If this came with instructions,
If only I knew how to say
that not to say is better.
What a disaster, I have been travelling for so long
that I won’t know how to come back to just one place.
Convalescence
The man who assures me
that he loves me
brings his fingers to my mouth
and sweetly
extracts copper threads from it.
They come out from my throat.
When he caresses them,
they melt in his palms.
I feel faint,
sustained by nothingness.
Caos Theory
In the surface
of my human’s skin
there are remainders
of saliva, kisses, strokes, bites,
sperm,
hickeys,
cuts, wounds, blows, sores,
sweat, scars,
scratches, blood, scabs, bruises, lesions,
injuries,
slaps,
varicose veins, blisters and burns.
I don’t need neither perforations nor tattoos,
my body
is a map.
I must make a hole
I take a spade and a rake
and I start digging,
breaking the tiles first,
shattering the concrete afterwards
and the earth that sustains it all
and, every stone that I find, I keep it
in my pockets in case
I suddenly live a landslide
and I must build a wall and I must wait for
everything getting softer.
I do not want to wonder
neither where I will get nor for how long
nor if, in the end, I will find
somebody digging on the opposite direction.
Who knows if I will clash,
without time enough
to prevent the collision,
against someone’s head
filled with clay and rubble.
The truth, panic of clashing
against myself,
of myself being the question and the answer.
Bonsai
The fear of doing it
and doing it wrong,
the fear of not doing it and the fear of
“I should have done it already”,
the fear of doing it before it must be done
or of doing it
when it should be
already done,
the fear of doing it fearing the finishing
or of doing it knowing
that the end
is already written
before doing anything.
Risk
To build and to rebuild
and to build and to build to open
roads and to asphalt and to make new holes and to make noise
and to hammer nails to hold it all and to cement
roots to the pit, stones to the wharf, and to make new bridges
to converge them all to fabricate
more tools which will allow us
to build and to rebuild
and to build and to build and to open
roads and to asphalt and to make new holes and to make noise
and to hammer nails hold it all and to cement
roots to the fist, stones to the neck.
We will keep licking the jam in the knife.
And nobody will stop us.
Ruderal
The smallness of the minimal
is reborn.
It lies by the side of the road,
by the riverbank of the mental block.
What a determination
the one by the little plant which grows by the ditch,
disturbing the cement that strangles it.
Wild in the very bone,
I do my best to intimate
with this plant,
to cheer it up not to decline,
to copy its winning sign.
Some invented
similarities.
A vegetal impulse which is already mine.
The hibernation of the bear
I fell in love
with the umbilical cord.
It gave me the requirements,
it gave them to me into my mouth.
Now I live in the permanent longing
of all the lives
to which I could have linked myself
with that conduct
of flesh and visions.
My mother
does not know anything
about the prehistoric paintings
that I left
over her uterine wall.
Anna Gual 