eboli/eboli01/eboli_0119.htm

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Fragmentos de La edad de los objetos/
Fragments of The Age of Objects

Translated by Tracy Lewis

Celestial dictation

Someone dictates some things and words.
Then the histories,
the treaties, the accounts, our debts
are written and we sign the papers imbued
with fevers of selfishness and ferocity.

Someone reads those things and words.
Then the windows
are closed to us and we believe, transparently, in death.

Mandate from Heaven

Someone somewhere speaks few words, gives a few orders.
That’s when histories are written:
covenants, balance sheets, debts we incurred,
signatures we penned
while bathed in sweats of ego and ferocity.

Someone somewhere reads those words, hears those orders.
That’s when windows close on us
and our transparent hearts believe in death.

Omen


A sense of omen, death so rampant,
a sense of some cancer, of iron, of blows;
a sense of duty that clouds the senses,
meaning in the word: vain concealment.

A harbinger of meaning, of habit and
naïve, everyday, present, lurking demons.

A sense that revives. An omen that destroys.

Eagles or sand raining every night?

Foreknowledge

Sense of foreknowledge, smug death,
sense of cancer somewhere, of iron and blows on iron;
sense of duty which fogs the senses,
sense within words: vain concealment.

Foreknowledge of sense, of native habit
and ingenious demons lying in wait, here, now.

Sense which revives. Foreknowledge which destroys.

Is it eagles or sand that rains from every night-time sky?

Matter

Let the carnations and the eyes run,
let the seagulls run, the birds, the afternoon,
let everyone run in their sincere line!

Up or down
– slowly –
the objects wait for their moment.

Matter

Let them all skitter madly along: carnations, eyes,
gulls and the other birds, afternoon and evening;
everyone and everything, let it all just scurry through
its undeceptive course!

Up or down
-shifting slowly, slowly-
the objects sit, waiting for their time to come.

Forgetfulness

Age is material: materially
in forms that announce themselves collapsed
, we grow up and fail in what is wounded.

The dice on the table:
cubic details of luck,
are already moving, we throw them,
feverishly,
also throwing ourselves into the void.

Matter of materials, our eyes:
our chance and thought is oblivion.

Oblivion

This material age: materially
in shapes that flaunt themselves even in collapse,
we grow then stumble on our own debris.

Dice on the table:
squared-off trifles of fortune,
in motion already, or we fling them
feverishly,
leaping in the act into the pit.

Material of materials, our eyes:
chance and thought are our oblivion.