Toma la Dignidad, Dame la Vida

Jorge Gimeno

El aire seca su miga, toda su miga.

Tendido en un lecho de sal.

No se afeita con cuchilla de aljibe.

Se pasa la ortiga de la mano. O no se la pasa.

Se levanta para vacar.

 

Los rosales, las prímulas,

el seto.

Los ve.

A pleno día,

en las barbas de una prímula,

le muerde la rota

dentición del pan negro.

(él muerde la carne de no morder.)

Plata en el pelo y plata en los ojos.

Se aferra a su chaqueta

como a la vida,

aunque busca los plátanos,

cuerdos, tropicales,

el álamo espermático.

 

El hilo de la vista

a punto de rotura.

La piel,

escrita en lengua muerta,

dice:

“Dame gazpacho.

Dame tortilla.

No quiero postre.

O el postre eres tú.”

No mezcla su sangre

con la espuma del mar.

No llora

su lágrima de té.

Piensa:

“He sido honesta almohada,

firme cabecero, sano pino,

serio sueño.”

Enhebra paja

en una aguja.

 

Cortar el seto

sería como follar,

tener treinta, cincuenta.

La camisa no oculta

el silencio

de un bosque de bonsáis.

Él ya no abre y no cierra

el monedero

que

desde hace años

ella no abre y no cierra.

Es el búho

que en lo blanco del día

cruza ante el sol

y eriza el vello.

Aún es la fecha y el mundo.

 

Take My Dignity, Give Me Life

Translated by Curtis Bauer

The air dries his flesh, all of his skin.

Lying on a bed of salt.

He doesn’t shave with the ice razored over the cistern.

He rubs the nettle of his hand across his face. Or he doesn’t.

He stands to be idle.

 

The roses, the primroses,

the hedge.

He sees them.

In the middle of the day,

on the whiskers of a primrose,

he bites the black bread’s

broken dentition.

(He bites the unbiteable meat.)

Silver in his hair and silver in his eyes.

He hangs on to his jacket

as if to life,

even though he looks for bananas,

reasonable people, tropics,

the spermatic poplar tree.

 

His sight line

about to break.

Flesh,

written in a dead language,

says:

“Give me gazpacho.

Give me omelet.

I don’t want dessert.

Or you are dessert.”

He doesn’t mix his blood

with the froth of the ocean.

He doesn’t cry

his tears of tea.

He thinks:

“I have been an honest pillow,

a sturdy headboard, a healthy pine,

a serious dream.”

Thread straw

through a needle.

 

Cutting the hedge

would be like fucking,

being thirty, fifty.

A shirt doesn’t conceal

the silence

of a bonsai forest.

Now he no longer opens or closes

his coin purse

that

for years now

she doesn’t open or close.

He is the owl

that passes in front of the sun

in the white of day

and makes your hair stand on end.

It is still the date and the world.

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