© 2005 - 2008 Per Contra: The International Journal of the Arts, Literature and Ideas.
Play of Shadows
I
I awoke with my skin
papered in words,
I opened the envelope stuck
to my thigh
my fingertips trembled
as I separated irony and poster.
Confused in my speech
squeezed by routine
I didn´t give a name to morning,
I gathered myself in the abbreviation
of my shoulders
and I slowly started to read myself.
II
My origins are in the renaissance
painted for five centuries
I reincarnate
faces without smiles
similarities encircle me…
an illusion of Botticelli.
A collector of metaphors
healed in springs
ironic invisible
daring in my oddity
I paint myself this very moment.
III
Art saved me
Prestidigitator of instincts
It redeemed my fears
with its concupiscent humor.
Lethal shell
slash my roots
make moist the specters
of the sun against my bones.
V
Pilgrim pleasure
join me to your pulse
reenact in this medulla
parapet of black swans.
Illimitable satisfaction
Free me from my limits
Spread wide my fountain.
VII
See me otherwise
mint draping your slope
play with the balm
of my forked mist
lose yourself in unison
multiply me in your ivy
stagger the essence
of this diluting crystal
take refuge in my hair
coppery in its thickness
astonish me and do not stop
until my fissure
is dispersed.
IX
Faith in your malice
packtrain of drizzle and entrails
refuge of lascivious pacts
carnal ambush.
Banquet of sentences
lair or roar
in the catharsis of the game.
X
Wanderers
of other centuries
cross paths within the Word.
Word
turbulent memory
of the duendes.
XI
In the epigraphs of books
and in the spasms of my flesh,
Live the designs
of this irreverent exercise.
XIV
I stopped writing
with the precision of the calendar
after they embalmed me
their texts
and I changed to a pyramid.
Now I know
by its mortal smells
signs of mourning
that ferment the tombs...
while I
travel upside-down
with another voice that comes to me
from a ghost asleep
mummified in cruelties.
Improper allegory
Desacrilizing silence
engraving in my mouth
the festivity of his death
in the scripture of a God
who is not the God of the dead.
XV
I don’t hear voices
or silences
just the spectacle
of making love
with Death.
Play of Shadows by Maritza Cino translated by Alexis Levitin and Fernando Iturburu