XXX

Resucito en cada medio tiempo diurno

entre cenizas húmedas, sales y saliva

engendro de amasijo, cutre mal oliente

sàbanas pisadas al olvido

sabor a sexo en mis manos, ojos y boca

con la verdad del hombre encogida por la culpa

por no ser un hombre de verdad en tu ilimitada ausencia

homicida de mis sueños que no viajan al futuro

2.

Inventaré una geografía, tu cuerpo,

crearé el diccionario de tus ojos

(cada mirada una palabra)

3.

Resumiendo posibilidades, no creo en el azar

alguna divina razón interpretará por ti

este extraño lenguaje de miradas específicas y suspiros en general.

What can I hold you with

I offer you lean streets, desperate sunsets, the moon of the ragged suburbs.

I offer you the bitterness of a man who has looked long and long at the lonely moon.

I offer you my ancestors, my dead men, the ghosts that living men have honoured in marble: my father's father killed in the frontier of Buenos Aires, two bullets through his lungs, bearded and dead, wrapped by his soldiers in the hide of a cow; my mother's grandfather -just twentyfour- heading a charge of three hundred men in Perú, now ghosts on vanished horses.

I offer you whatever insight my books may hold. whatever manliness or humour my life.

I offer you the loyalty of a man who has never been loyal.

I offer you that kernel of myself that I have saved somehow -the central heart that deals not in words, traffics not with dreams and is untouched by time, by joy, by adversities.

I offer you the memory of a yellow rose seen at sunset, years before you were born.

I offer you explanationsof yourself, theories about yourself, authentic and surprising news of yourself.

I can give you my loneliness, my darkness, the hunger of my heart; I am trying to bribe you with uncertainty, with danger, with defeat.