The Unknown University (54 page)

THE DONKEY

Sometimes I dream that Mario Santiago

Comes looking for me on his black motorcycle.

And we leave behind the city and as

The lights are disappearing

Mario Santiago tells me we’re dealing with

A stolen bike, the last bike

Stolen to travel through the poor

Northern lands, toward Texas,

Chasing an unnamable dream,

Unclassifiable, the dream of our youth,

Which is to say the bravest of all

Our dreams.
And put that way

How could I deny myself a ride on that fast black

Northern bike, breaking out on those roads

Long ago traveled by Mexican saints,

Mendicant Mexican poets,

Taciturn leeches from Tepito

Or Colonia Guerrero, all on the same path,

Where times are mixed up and confused

Verbal and physical, yesterday and aphasia.

And sometimes I dream that Mario Santiago

Comes looking for me, or it’s a faceless poet,

A head without eyes or mouth or nose,

Only skin and volition, and without asking questions

I get on the bike and we take off

On the northern roads, the head and I,

Strange crewmembers embarking on

A miserable route, roads erased by dust and rain,

Land of flies and little lizards, dried brush

And blizzards of sand, the only imaginable stage

For our poetry.

And sometimes I dream that the road

Our bike or our longing is traveling

Doesn’t begin in my dream, but in the dreams

Of others: the innocent, the blessed,

The meek, those who, unfortunately for us,

Are no longer here.
And with that Mario Santiago and I

Leave Mexico City, which is the extension

Of so many dreams, the materialization of so many

Nightmares, and retake our positions

Always headed north, always on the road

Of coyotes, and then our bike

Is the color of night.
Our bike

Is a black donkey dawdling

Through lands of Curiosity.
A black donkey

Moving through the humanity and geometry

Of these poor desolate landscapes.

And Mario’s laugh or the head’s

Greets the ghosts of our youth,

The unnameable and useless dream

Of courage.

And sometimes I think I see a black bike

Like a donkey disappearing down the dirt

Roads of Zacatecas and Coahuila, on the outer limits

Of the dream, and without quite knowing

Its meaning, its ultimate significance,

I still understand its music:

A cheerful farewell song.

And maybe they’re gestures of courage, saying

Adios, without resentment or bitterness,

At peace with their total futility and with us ourselves.

They’re the little acts of defiance that are useless — or that

Years and custom made us think useless — waving hello,

Making enigmatic signals to us with their hands

In the middle of the night, on one side of the road,

Like our beloved and abandoned children,

Raised alone in these calcareous deserts,

Like the radiance that one day stood in our path

And that we’d forgotten.

And sometimes I dream that Mario arrives

With his black bike in the middle of a nightmare

And we take off bound for the north,

Bound for ghost towns where

Little lizards and flies live.

And while the dream takes me

From one continent to another

Through a shower of cold, painless stars,

I see the black bike, like a donkey from another planet,

Split the lands of Coahuila in two.

A donkey from another planet

That is the unrestrained longing of our ignorance,

But that is also our hope

And our courage.

An unnameable and useless courage, for sure,

But re-encountered in the margins

Of the most remote dream,

In the partitions of the final dream,

In the confusing and magnetic trail

Of donkeys and poets.

HE VUELTO A VER A MI PADRE

para León Bolaño

La historia comienza con la llegada del sexto
enfermo,

un tipo de más de sesenta, solo, de enormes patillas,

con una radio portátil y una o dos novelas de aquellas

que escribía Lafuente Estefanía.

Los cinco que ya estábamos en la habitación éramos amigos,

es decir nos hacíamos bromas y conocíamos

los síntomas verdaderos de la muerte,

aunque ahora ya no estoy tan seguro.

El sexto, mi padre, llegó silenciosamente

y durante todo el tiempo que estuvo en nuestra habitación

casi no habló con nadie.

Sin embargo una noche, cuando uno de los enfermos se moría

(Rafael, el de la cama n.º 4)

fue él quien se levantó y llamó a las enfermeras.

Nosotros estábamos paralizados de miedo.

Y mi padre obligó a las enfermeras a venir y salvó al enfermo

de la cama n.º 4

y luego volvió a quedarse dormido

sin darle ninguna importancia.

Después, no sé por qué, lo cambiaron de habitación.

A Rafael lo mandaron a morir a su casa y a otros dos

los dieron de alta.

Y a mi padre hoy lo volví a ver.

Como yo, sigue en el hospital.

Lee su novela de vaqueros y cojea de la pierna izquierda.

Su rostro está terriblemente arrugado.

Aún lo acompaña la radio portátil de color rojo.

Tose un poco más que antes y no le da mucha importancia a las
cosas.

Hoy hemos estado juntos en la salita, él con su novela

y yo con un libro de William Blake.

Afuera atardecía lentamente y los coches fluían como pesadillas.

Yo pensaba y pensaba en mi padre, una y otra vez,

hasta que éste se levantó, dijo algo

con su voz aguardentosa

que no entendí

y encendió la luz.

Eso fue todo.
Él encendió la luz y volvió a la lectura.

Praderas interminables y vaqueros de corazones fieles.

Afuera, sobre el Monte Carmelo, pendía la luna llena.

I SAW MY FATHER AGAIN

for León Bolaño

The story begins with the arrival of the sixth
patient,

a guy over sixty, alone, sporting huge sideburns,

with a portable radio and one or two of those

Lafuente Estefanía type novels.

The five of us already in the room were friends,

which is to say we joked around and knew about

death’s real symptoms,

though now I’m not so sure.

The sixth, my father, arrived silently

and the whole time he was in our room

he hardly spoke to anyone.

Nevertheless one night, when one of the patients was dying

(Rafael, from bed #4)

he was the one who got up and called the nurses.

We were paralyzed with fear.

And my father made the nurses come and saved the patient

in bed #4

and then went back to sleep

without giving it a second thought.

Afterwards, I don’t know why, they put him in a different room.

They sent Rafael to die at home and

discharged two others.

And today I saw my father again.

Like me, he’s still in the hospital.

He reads his cowboy novel and limps on his left leg.

His face is terribly wrinkled.

He still carries the red colored portable radio.

He coughs a little more than before and doesn’t put much stock in
things.

Today we were together in the ward, he with his novel

and I with a book by William Blake.

Outside night was slowly falling and the cars flowed like nightmares.

I was thinking and thinking about my father, over and over,

until he stood up, said something

with his raspy voice

that I didn’t understand

and turned on the light.

That was all.
He turned on the light and went back to reading.

Endless prairies and cowboys with loyal hearts.

Outside, over Monte Carmelo, the moon hung full.

LOS BLUES TAOÍSTAS
DEL HOSPITAL
VALLE HEBRÓN

1

Crecí junto a jóvenes duros.

Duros y sensibles a los grandes espacios desolados.

Amaneceres de cristal en América, lejos.
¿Sabes

Lo que quiero decir?
Esos amaneceres sin hospitales, a vida o
muerte,

En casuchas de adobe azotadas por el viento,

Cuando la muerte abrió la puerta de lata y asomó su sonrisa:

Una sonrisa de pobre

Que jamás –lo supimos de golpe– comprenderíamos.

Una sonrisa atroz en donde de alguna manera se resumían

Nuestros esfuerzos y nuestros desafíos tal vez inútiles.

Y vimos nuestras muertes reflejadas

En la sonrisa de aquella muerte

Que abrió la puerta de lata de la casucha de adobes

E intentó fundirse con nosotros.

2

Estabas tú junto a nosotros.

Y tú no te moviste

Cuando emprendimos la marcha.

Te quedaste en la casucha de adobe

Y no vimos tus lágrimas, oh hermana.

Meruit habere redemptorem.

Meruit tam sacra membra tangere.

Digna tam sacra membra tangere.

3

Y resueltos salimos de nuestros agujeros.

De nuestros cálidos nidos.

Y habitamos el huracán.

Ahora todos muertos.

También los que recordaron

Un amanecer de cristal

En el territorio de la Quimera y del Mito.

4

Así, tú y yo nos convertimos

En sabuesos de nuestra propia memoria.

Y recorrimos, como detectives latinoamericanos,

Las calles polvorientas del continente

Buscando al asesino.

Pero sólo encontramos

Vitrinas vacías, manifestaciones equívocas

De la verdad.

5

En los territorios de la Quimera

Volveré a encontrarte.

Y te daré diez besos

Y luego

Diez más.

THE TAOIST BLUES
OF VALLE HEBRÓN
HOSPITAL

1

I grew up with tough kids.

Tough and sensitive to great desolate spaces.

Crystalline dawns in America, far away.
You know

What I mean?
Those life-or-death dawns without hospitals,

In adobe shacks lashed by wind,

When Death opened the tin door and flashed her smile:

A poor person’s smile

That we would never — it dawned on us — understand.

A terrible smile which summed up, in a way,

Our potentially useless efforts and defiance.

And we saw our deaths reflected

In the smile of that Death

Who opened the tin door of the adobe shack

And tried to join us.

2

You were there with us.

And you didn’t move

When we took off.

You stayed in the adobe shack

And we didn’t see your tears, oh sister.

Meruit habere redemptorem.

Meruit tam sacra membra tangere.

Digna tam sacra membra tangere.

3

And, determined, we left our holes.

Our warm nests.

And occupied the hurricane.

All dead now.

Those, too, who remembered

A crystalline dawn

In the land of Chimera and Myth.

4

That’s how you and I became

Sleuths of our own memory.

And traveled, like Latin American detectives,

Over the dusty streets of the continent

Looking for the assassin.

But we only found

Empty shop windows, ambiguous manifestations

Of truth.

5

In the lands of the Chimera

I’ll meet you again.

And I’ll give you ten kisses

And then

Ten more.