Virgilio Piñera / Poem to be Said in the Midst of a Great Silence

Virgilio Piñera
Poster by T.A.

Poem to be Said 

in the Midst of a Great Silence

by Virgilio Piñera
BIOGRAPHY

Translated by Pablo Medina

Can it be they are going to kill?

Will they pierce the heart with a huge knife?

And with the sharpest scalpel empty the eyes?

And with the steeliest chisel break the skull?

And with the most hammer of hammers crush the bones?

Can it be that on the erotic table

--table of sex, table of love--

my love, you and I,

being startled one night

your heart spoke

when you were under my blood?

Can it be the same as it was

when it was an oath, and even more so,

your work, your word bled,

soaked by the soft perfume of kisses,

so as not to deny, to be one indivisible?

And can it be so blindly believed,

so blindly, that all the suns go dark forever

while the soul travels in darkness?

Can it be there never was a soul despite the waves of music we made?

Soul that never was though soul you might be for an instant?

Remember that instant when you were a soul and adored me,

and then your own monster came suddenly

to take you to the place where being you were?

Can it be that after you are no longer,

when not being is merely a mound of dried out kisses,

you will be by not being, instead being love?

(1967)

Virgilio Piñera / I See It

Virgilio Piñera
Poster by T.A.

I See It

by Virgilio Piñera
BIOGRAPHY

Translated by Pablo Medina

Better death raise

the crown of your life

to weigh it,

and on the forehead where the moon hides its reflection

death will overcome its own severity with splendor.

You are naked,

as if the hourless days slid down your body,

as if a fleeting animal raced

between rest and memory.

Day now begins its ascent

and you end up in the sudden beak of inertia.

You call me as if the impregnable shrouds

of destruction dropped on my ear one by one.

And I too label you destroyed,

I reach your outskirts,

I set fire to you with the suns of my condolence,

I place you in a box of laments,

your fear reaches me and I wreck the air

with the vibrations of its impediment.

I see you in the air like a dead star

shattering into cold moons,

I see you with your shoes and your perfection.

(1945)

Virgilio Piñera / Elegy and Such

Virgilio Piñera
Poster by T.A.

Elegy and Such

by Virgilio Piñera

BIOGRAPHY

Translated by Pablo Medina

I invite the word
walking its barren bark among the dogs.
Everything is sad.
If it crowns forehead and breasts with shining leaves
a cold smile will blossom on the moon.
Everything is sad.
Later the sad dogs will eat the leaves
and bark out words with glistening sounds.
Everything is sad.
A dog invites the hyacinths by the river.
Everything is sad.
With loony words, with doggerel arrows,
with tiny toothy leaves
the hyacinths wound the mute damsels.
Everything is sad.
The black grass grows with a quiet hum,
but shiny edges caress the rhythm.
Everything is sad.
Behind the words the serpents laugh,
deaf earth allows no sound.
Everything is sad.


A heavenly bird barks in the sky
to scare death away.
The bird discovers it with with the flowers of night
and seduces it with words of a dog
and buries it with a cupful of earth.
Everything is sad.
I invite the earthbound word
that cuts through life and mirrors
and splits the echo of its image.
Everything is sad.
A play of words and barks.


Everything is sad.
A javelin whooshes through the speeding wind
in virile variations.
Half a cup of earth silenced the music.


Everything is sad.
Then the earth drank itself.
Everything is sad.
And when the time for death arrives
place me before a mirror where I may see myself.
Everything is sad.


(1941)