4.3.23

So soon after I had to have my little schnauzer put down, Orion, my big shepherd, has also succumbed to a cancer that metastasized inward. And my cat has poisoned herself licking the flea treatment from her neck and her nerves have been severely affected for several days. But she’s stopped trembling and making spastic movements, and her pupils now react normally – they were completely dilated and she spent three days in a laundry basket in the dark bathroom, only going out a night. Now she’s recovering her routines, but we still don’t if her liver has been affected…

16.2.23

Intention forgotten. As usual with New Year’s intentions. It’s pouring again, there are new leaks in my roof, but I can’t help celebrating the fact that it’s raining on the first bull fight of the Carnival, and it rained on the election of the Miss, and will probably go on raining on the rest of the days. I have always loathed this Carnival. When ‘tourists’ used to come from all over the country, and fill cowhide boots with beer to go to the bull fights, and keep waking me all night with the loud music coming from the open air dance floors, it was worse. Chavism has had some good side effects.

8.2.23

So I have fallen down badly in my intention to write every day! My excuse is that I have suddenly got a lot of translating work to do, some new and some a continuation of projects I´m involved in. Also, and this is probably more relevant, the change in the lunar year has brought some unquiet energy into the atmosphere and I haven´t adapted. Also again, after months of rain and cold the rain has suddenly stopped and the sun is fierce for many hours of the day. The plants in my garden and wood that were happy with so much damp are looking bedraggled, almost shocked – watering them can never be the same. I feel something similar to the plants.

27.1.23

Otra escena en el zoológico de Mysore. Una americana un poco loca había convencido a los gerentes que tenía experiencia en el manejo de grandes gatos, y le habían dado permiso para pasear a una tigresa joven, todavía casi cachorra, por los caminos del zoológico, para que hiciera ejercicio y se acostumbrara a la gente. La mujer me invitó a acompañarla un día y por supuesto acepté. Íbamos muy tranquilas, caminando entre la gente – había muchas personas en el parque – cuando de repente la tigresa se puso nerviosa por la presencia de una mujer pobre que limpiaba con una escoba el piso. ¿Sería que los trapos de la mujer olían? Cuando se dio cuenta de la actitud de la tigresa, su miedo también tendría un olor. La tigresa jalaba su correo, pero Sally la controló y la mujer se dio a la fuga. Poco tiempo después, vueltas a la calma, Sally me dijo que si yo quería podía tocar el animal. Puse una mano por un momento en su cabeza. El pelo era áspero, como la de una vaca, y sentí la dureza del cráneo. La tigresa ni siquiera reaccionó, pero para mí haber “tocado un tigre” era una alegría y un recuerdo para toda la vida.

26.1.23

Ahora recuerdo una escena en el zoológico de Mysore. Por alguna razón los tigres habían sido llevados a la jaula contigua a la de los leones, y resultó en una batalla feroz sin contacto corporal posible. Los leones se tiraban con una fuerza aterradora contra la barrera que los separaba. Cuando se ven en las películas leones cazando y comiendo, no hay ferocidad en su expresión, más bien contento, pero en la confrontación con la única especie que puede competer con ellos, se enfurecen, da miedo verlos.

25.1,23

Soñé con un caballo que quería llegar a hacerse acariciar y no podía porque había entre nosotros unas rejas sólidas. Me dio tristeza por los dos. Y me hizo recordar otros animales que he visto detrás de las barras de sus jaulas, sobre todo un maltrecho león en el zoológico de Mérida. Pero quizás lo que decía en realidad el sueño es que arriesgo (como arriesgamos todos) quedar separada de mi naturaleza animal, de los animales también.

24,1,23

Hoy es martes, mi día de mercado, y llego a casa demasiado cansada para poder pensar. Al meno es mi excusa para no agregar nada al diario hoy.

23.1.23

Yesterday was the first day of the lunar new year. It seems that the animal representing this year in the cycle is being called more often now Rabbit – earlier I saw more often Cat, and my Japanese friend, a serious student of the Chinese horoscope, who taught me to take notice of its transformations, called it Cat. My daughter is a Cat and my son and I both Tigers, and our relations have not always been easy, as I suppose could be expected in an all-feline family. Though as Toshiko often repeated, the predictions are probabilities. It’s up to you what you make of them, and love was never lacking between us. The Rabbit/Cat is supposed to bring grace, harmony, a relaxing of tensions. If only… Please Cat, bring us some peace.

22.1.23

Soñé con un caballo que quería llegar a hacerse acariciar por mí y no podía porque había entre nosotros unas rejas sólidas. Me dio tristeza por los dos. Y me hizo recordar otros animales que he visto detrás de las barras de sus jaulas, sobre todo un maltrecho león en el zoológico de Mérida. Pero quizás lo que decía en realidad el sueño es que arriesgo (arriesgamos todos) quedar separada de mi naturaleza animal, de los animales también.

21.2.23

I hadn’t realized vortex was such a useful word for describing what’s happening in the human world until a young friend said that addiction to exposure in the social media is a vortex. And difficult to resist. In spite of their talent and intelligence, she and her friends feel they must publish anything they write, however raw it still is, because they can’t do without the feedback in order to believe in their worth, almost in their existence. Will that not let them ever become good writers? It would be a loss.

20.1.23

Han sido días de tensión nerviosa. De repente, la misma tarde, no podía ver Deutsche Welle en Simple TV y no podía abrir Netflix en el Apple TV. Tres días más tarde, estoy todavía sin soluciones. Esperamos la visita de un técnico de Simple TV (todos nuestros intentos para resolver el problema por la configuración han sido vanos), y espero un milagro para Netflix porque ni entendemos las instrucciones de la página para volver a activar mi conexión. He cambiado tres veces la clave, y nada. En este momento estoy hasta sin internet o datos en mi teléfono. Y pensar que hace 20 años no manejaba ni necesitaba nada de todo esto. Ahora al final de la tarde tengo que sentarme frente a la TV y olvidar todos los problemas y fastidios del día mirando cosas muchas veces tontas y feas.

16.1.23

Ayer hicimos la paradura en casa de Mery and Diómedes. En 2019 traje una vela blanca especial de la última tienda que las hace y vende en Granada de Guatemala como regalo para Mery. Ella dijo que sería para su paradura, que haría sólo cuando se fueran Maduro y su gobierno. Este año decidió que era inútil esperar y le cantamos al Niño Adel y yo como padrinos, el amigo Luis Gómez y los anfitriones. Sólo Mery, creo, es realmente devota, e inventó una manera de recitar los versos y el rosario que respetaba el rito tradicional y donde podían participar los agnósticos, hasta los normalmente opuestos a los ritos religiosos. Yo amo los ritos e por la imaginación me identifico con ellos, y conozco la paradura por años de celebrarlo en el páramo. Las diferencias no importaron y las peticiones de paz, con la dulzura de la imagen del niño, unían a todos.

Niño lindo, ante te me rindo.

Tambiém comimos delicioso.

14.1.23

I’m well aware that the bits of tradition I was seeing, sharing in, were the last gleams of cultures already long broken by invasion and colonization, in many cases by the British Empire. (Paradoxically or not, that gave me an advantage in India, where in many contexts the British are still looked up to.)

The saddest case is probably Tibet, where a maravelous world has been, and still is being, trampled and smashed by the Chinese. Again as a small example, there is not a valley on the precipitous road from Lhasa to the Chinese border (gangs working on it are all Tibetans with Chinese overseers) where the immense green expanse rising to the sky at its borders has not been spoilt by the intrusion of an ugly set of sheds.

Last night I watched part of a program about the relationship between the Dalai Lama and Archibishop Desmond Tutu. Their capacity for joy in spite of – they would say also because of – lives of loss and struggle is impressive and moving. Watching again the scenes of the Chinese invasion and the escape of the Dalai Lama, what I felt (I still feel it) was anger and hopelessness at the obtuseness, cruelty, fanatacism of the human race.

12.1.23

To go on with yesterday’s ideas. I was lucky, privileged, to be in some places before their connection to a traditional past was broken. I may be exaggerating, but the changes over the 30-40 years since I first went to the East have been vertiginous, due to “globalization” and lately the social media. The changes in Europe are a different story, more personal because they were a falling away from my own origins, an emptying out of values that made me decide to say “goodbye to all that” and emigrate to Venezuela. Which has slid inexorably into its own decadence, but given me more space than I could have had elsewhere.

In Tibet I travelled to regions that are closed now to visitors, in China I was briefly in Xinjiang and admired the dignity of a people now being repressed to extinction, in Burma I had to myself some of the most resonant Buddhist sites (yes, I know that was partly because of the oppressive military government, but the opening up has not brought a return to old ways but to an increased divisiveness). The India I first came to was a much more peaceful, hopeful country than today’s Hindu fascist state, and there too the change has been too rapid to keep up with. The improvement of the economy has not brought justice to the marginalized, and the ancient culture is losing its immediacy in people’s lives. As a small example: during my first stay, two years in Mysore, there was no television and classical music concerts were well attended, by people versed in the very complex tradition. On my last trip, the musicians were not as skilful and the audience was waiting for the fast, flashy last “movement” of the ragas, so that the long alap without percussion at the beginning, the part I most enjoyed, became brief.

11.1.23

I’m already faltering. It’s been so abnormally cold for this town, this valley (what will be “normal” from now on?), that my brain has felt frozen. I’ll try to do better today.

In “normal” times, and when I was younger, as soon as I began to feel stagnant at home – restless and in need of new or renewed perceptions – I would think of going on a journey, and usually, within a few months if not sooner, I would be setting out. Now that’s impossible, not only because I’m getting too old to travel alone and running out of the dollar savings the collapse of this country has forced me to live on, but because the places where I would like to go are in crises of various kinds, and sliding further and further from the traditional culture and way of living I felt lucky to share, however marginally, for a while.

But memories remain and sometimes come up vividly to remind me that it’s true, I did make all those wonderful journeys. Today it’s the slightly guilty pleasure of getting up very early in the morning in Bangkok and slipping into the big temple where later in the day foreigners will not be admitted. The air is cool, the streets are almost deserted, a few worshippers are dotted around the temple court and praying inside. In the silence and concentration, the riches of the temple don’t seem superfluous, they’re part of the devotion. The jade Buddha on his height emanates compassion.

7.1.23

Hoy llega la triste noticia de la muerte de Victoria de Stefano, una persona que esperaba volver a encontrar, que lamentaba no conocer mejor. Parece que nunca se recuperó bien de un fuerte ataque de Covid.

Otro gran espíritu que faltará a este triste país, a la atmósfera de la tierra.

6.1.23

There’s no time to think today, special guests are coming to lunch and after I’ll be useless. I will just commemorate the skinny black and white cat from the tin shack at my gate, who was unwise enough to get through the fence into my patio, to look for food or to visit my cat (they had become friends), and was killed by Anita, my adopted hunting dog. She’s too fat, and a very sweet companion, but also a natural born killer; she’s killed several generations of possums that have got into the garden. The cat when I found her was still warm, and there was no visible wound. Anita knows where to strike.

5.1.23

A figure that returns sometimes to my imagination is Nay Win, a Burmese student, small and thin, who was my guide to the village and surroundings of Mrk U. To reach that beautiful place, you have to take a flight to Sitwe and then a ferry up the river, there are no roads. I got off the plane at Sitwe, expecting to find at least some information on how to go further, or others from the flight who were going on, and there was nothing. I stood there wondering what to do, and Nay Win appeared, offering to arrange transport (there were no more ferries that day) and accompany me as a guide. He spoke enough English for us to understand each other. I decided to trust him, and we went by rickshaw to a lonely place on the river where he talked to the captain (who was beautiful like a bronze Buddha statue) of a very large boat which I hired at a very reasonable price.

At the Mrk U we hired bicycles to visit the temples near by and a village across the river which had no electricity and could have belonged to a medieval world, with its artisans. I stayed at a simple guest house, and one day Nay Win took me to meet his family, in a palafitte with ducks splashing in the water below and without plumbing or divisions into separate rooms, where they offered me tea and bananas.

One evening the people of the village got together to sing, and Nay Win turned out to be the singer they wanted to listen to. He had a beautiful voice and sang what sounded like sad songs, very moving. I declined their request to sing myself.

When I got home I tried to send Nay Win two songs I had written for him, at the email address he had said would find him, but they were never received. Later there were student protests, violent in Sitwe with many deaths, and I tried again to reach him to find out if he was all right. There was never any answer.

4.1.23

I’ve recovered from the limbo between Christmas and New Year’s Day, and I’m glad the earth is on the upswing again and I can think about how to fill the time ahead, but it sounds hollow to me to be wishing everyone a Happy New Year (in Venezuela it’s normal to wish Feliz Año to anyone you meet for the first time in the new year), seeing how unpromising the future looks here and in most places. But I´m afraid that’s overfussy and even mean of me, so HAPPY NEW YEAR.

3.1.23

Ayer cuando empecé a regar me pareció que estaba saliendo poca agua de la manguera (a veces salen lombrices), así que fui a revisar el tanque. Un rabi pelado muerto estaba flotando encima, no descompuesto pero por el olor muerto hace varios días. Lo agarré por la cola de ratón enorme y lo tiré entre los árboles. Hubo que vaciar el tanque y lavarlo con jabón y cloro.

1.1.23

New Year’s resolution, to write in this diary every day. (I don’t quite believe it, but I’d like to.)

Late December 2022

Hombre Verde

Juntos esperamos que salga el sol
de su forcejeo con las nubes
en la cabecera del valle:
yo, el perrito Loco
brincón como una cabra
y el Hombre Verde, hirsuto y huesudo,
compañero de andanzas por las rocas del río
y los rastrojos de diciembre.

El sol asoma en la franja del cúmulo,
suelto inicia su lento ascenso
por el azul límpido del cielo.
El pelo rojo del perrito se enciende,
los ojos abejorro del Hombre Verde
se colman de un resplandor dorado
rayado de negro intenso, la noche
que persiste aun en el día más espléndido
vinculándolo a la profundidad de la tierra
donde madura su semilla.

Con él escalo el oro de la luz,
con él desciendo a las tinieblas de la concepción.

Green Man

Together we wait for the sun
to break away from his duel
with the clouds at the top of the valley,
I, the little dog Loco,
skittish as a goat,
and the Green Man, hairy and bony,
companion of wanderings over the river rocks
and December stubble fields.

The sun peers over the fringe of the cumulus,
begins his slow free ascent
on the sky’s limpid blue.
The dog’s red coat is on fire,
the bumble bee eyes of the Green Man
are full of golden brilliance
with stripes of intense black,
the night that persists always
on the happiest day,
binding him to the deep earth
where his seed ripens.

With him I scale the light’s gold,
with him I descend to the darkness of conception.

The Shadow

The little dog’s nervous bark
opens the maw of the abyss.

The river rattling and grinding stones
is a big black bull pawing and snorting,
punishment is looming.

I dare to look over my shoulder.
The dog is panting happily,
Sunlight is totality again.

Eternity is crowded

Staring at live pattern
suddenly the film has gone
between eyes and time’s logic.

That’s eternity, I say later.
How many moments in a life touch eternity?
If all such startled instants
in all our lives go there,
how can eternity not be full to bursting?
And what about the animals?
Their eyes are always present.

It’s your eternity, now.
When your eyes have dissolved
nothing will be added to nothing
in the place before anything.

January 2, 2023

Seguirán recuerdos varios. Memories from here and there to follow.

El gayatri mantra es uno de los textos más antiguos e importantes del hinduismo, y por largo tiempo su uso estaba restringido a los brahmanes, pero ahora se ha extendido entre todas las castas y en la cultura popular. Recuerdo haberlo recitado con la amiga Nila Cariappa y el amigo Malabashetti, jefe de la policia a caballo de Mysore, sentados en una roca del cerro Chamundi a la puesta del sol (Shetti criticó sin piedad mi pronunciación). Recuerdo también que lo escuché en la radio, mientras me cortaban el pelo en una peluquería de Bangalore, cantado por una mujer como canción popular.

Om bhur bhuvaha svaha
Tat savitur varenyam
Bhargo devasya dhimahi
Dhiyo yonah prachodayat

Muy sencillamente significa: saludo a las tres dimensiones del ser, contemplamos ese excelente resplandor del sol dios, contemplándo que ese nos guíe hacia adelante.

Un ejemplo de cómo lo complican los sabios hindúes:

“Meditamos en la gloria de lo Divino, fuente creadora del Universo, a quien es justo rendir tributo, que es encarnación del conocimiento y la luz, y que destruye todos los sufrimientos y la ignorancia. Pedimos que desarrolle nuestra inteligencia.”

Yo que he sido siempre adoradora del sol, prefiero la versión directa.

Las que siguen son las entradas del año pasado. Last year´s entries follow.

January 12, 2022,

Since this link was set up, I haven’t ever felt like writing a Diary. Christmas and New Year’s Eve in Venezuela were quieter than they’ve ever been – quiet as noiseless because the few people partying are not letting off rockets, and quiet as solitary because so many friends are absent and the ones here are avoiding gatherings of more than a few.

But there was still good food, still the presents of hallacas, and our version of Christmas cake.

December 2021

Here again

Between the rickety gate and the house door
hardly a path, a grassy slope
with stones and tree roots,
and in that small space of time
the press that was squeezing me dry
lets go its city grip
and air rushes to my skull,
juices filter to my organs and senses.

Correspondence

From the clearing overgrown now
by withered grass stems
I look for the branch of a low tree
where once I saw a miraculous quetzal.

It’s not there, of course,
but in its place the crimson bells
of canelita flowering out of season
proclaim the color of its breast.

24/1/22

Yesterday my neighbor’s pig escaped into my field/garden/wood. We share the space. The friends with me tried to chase him back into his pen, but only succeeded in making him run faster, and the dogs joined in the fun – they seemed to be friends of his. I called a more competent neighbor (the pig’s owner was away) and he easily roped him and brought him back. He looked at me pleadingly with his very human eyes, and I felt sad that he had to go back to his narrow enclosure – and worse that his fat pink balls between his fat pink buttocks will soon be cut off to prepare him to be pork.

28/1/22

I got a virus on my phone and I’ve lost all my photos. I had three days of nervous tension and a sense of inferiority and helplessness, as well as indignation that this was being done to me. Unreasonable, I know, but at my age one does not relate intelligently to technological events. And I do blame Google for the worst of the problem, for advising me to download a cleaner and then bringing with it a lot of programs that flooded my phone and forced a change of software. How was I supposed to know I shouldn’t download an antivirus on Android??? Grrrr…

30/1/22

This is obviously not a diary, and not a blog. It’s a history and archive of my writing, and right now I’m not interested in any of it, except maybe the poems. The solstice and change of year have changed my energy and outlook, and I would like to start something new, but at 83 and in Venezuela, with all its social and practical problems (services worse all the time), not to mention Covid, I don’t see how… And my dogs tell me their life is just fine and I should keep still.

9/9/22

I’m still waiting for the “Page under construction” notice to be removed from this page, but in the mean time a few notes for poems, written this year.

Dama de noche

Last night I missed the epiphyllum blooming
I didn’t see the white wings of petals opening
or the poised dancers completed
or the stamens lying vibrant in their caves
nor smell the invitation to deliquesce.
I watched three flowers swelling up to the last day
I knew they were going to open
and in the evening I forgot.
I betrayed them
I betrayed myself
my senile memory let me down.
I try to console myself with today’s apparitions
the little fresh copper leaves of the mahogany
the wild turkey preening high in the cedar
but the hollow absence is still tearing at me
and suddenly I know, this is death
this is not being here while life goes on
and the queen of the night flowers without me.

No vultures in sight

‘Civil’ is a word we could forget,
survival is more likely without expectations.
Sky burial with the dog’s consent
dissipated the elements
and flames assured cleansing,
one life returned to essences.
Half-eaten and rotting bodies on the towers
indistinguishable ashes in collective pyres
violate the manners of departure
fog perspectives of release
undermine the body’s faith.
Mourning asks for quietness
for the beloved to be outlined
sculpted in the heart’s space
raised above decay
accessible to sorrowing breath and flowers.
Faced with agglomeration and
incestuous mingling of corpses
grief must sink into darkness
and arm itself with layers of rage.

Donna

The life of rocks, the life of grass,
the life of dogs with good homes
carries on unchanged.
People – some people – still dance at weekends
celebrate births and marriages
share errands with their friends.

But even to that daily level
the rot of corruption seeps down,
tempers become edgy,
obstacles offend,
nonbelief screens the sight
of mountains.

Children go to bed hungry
and the frontiers are bursting
with the deprived.

I remember the body of my friend
corroding slowly under the dominion
of a vicious disease.

She celebrated food and laughter while
her organs were besieged by a caul
of damaged cells

until the rot penetrated
too far and the fabric of her collapsed
through the boundary inside.

Paradura del Niño

“The ceremony of innocence is drowned”

Festival of the Child´s stirring
beyond his crib to bless the greening world.
Still the neighbors come, a new generation
in jeeps and city clothes
and they´ve learnt the verses
sing from their hearts,
their eyes light up with the mystery
and the sputtering candles.

For them the promise should come true
of a year´s fortune,
grace should spread in ripples
from the Child’s altar
sweeping away imposed poverty
the threats of plague and war

but the stiff mesh of power
constrains their lives and will subdue them.

The paradura is betrayed.

Earendel

I elect you a god fitting
for our time, your light so faint
only extreme instruments can trace it
across the screen of spacetime
beyond which the source, you,
no longer exist.

But still, light. And so old
bearing perhaps fresh
those first ingredients of light
our brains have learnt to deter:
feracity, wonder, love.

Earendel

Te elijo dios a la medida
de nuestro tiempo, tu luz tan tenue
la rastrean sólo instrumentos extremos
a través de la cortina del espaciotiempo
donde la fuente, tú, allá en el fondo
ya no existes.

Sin embargo, luz. Y tan vieja
puede ser que carga frescos
esos ingredientes primeros de la luz
que nuestros cerebros aprendieron rechazar:
feracidad, asombro, amor.

Finally the page under construction has gone (although there are many errors in layout that I don´t know how to fix) and I´m going to try to write here more regularly. In English or Spanish as the occasion or my state of mind dictates.

20 Septiembre 2022

El cielo del día que inicia
es azul fresco rayado
por plumas blancas.

En la tierra el contraste es vegetal,
cabezas blancas de molinillo
entre espigas de lucemota azul.

Draco: A Death

There was a circle round me in my home,
three dogs and Tea the cat,
my heart and safety.
Draco has gone and it’s broken,
The long limbs of trouble have pierced it

The first words in my head when I wake
Where’s Draco / Draco’s not here,
simultaneous.
Daylight is a membrane, a floor,
at moments like a periscope or crab’s eyes,
my mind breaks through it to review
the emptiness above.
Draco is not here –
Draco is in a hole in the ground under a cedro,
his friend Orion sat on the grave and mourned him,
no little grey dog comes for his supper,
these are facts.

But I retract my sight.
Here in this submerged place
there is neither past, present nor aching future,
time is a perpetual echoing waterfall,
I can join him if I want in his new dwelling.
More shades are with us –
my sister the space reader
friends barely remembered but here now
in their smiling age.
Underground dawn is twilight,
angels are composed of earth
with beetles’ wings.
My little dog lies among them
breathing quietly.

He has no breath,
his heart has stopped, he won’t
stand up.

Elegía para Draco

Un círculo protegía mi casa,
tres perros y la gata Tea,
mi corazón y seguridad.
Draco se fue y se ha roto,
las largas extremidades de la pena
lo han penetrado.

Las primeras palabras en mi cabeza al despertar:
dónde está Draco / Draco no está
simultáneas.
La luz del día es una membrana, un piso,
a momentos como un periscopio u ojos de cangrejo
mi mente lo atraviesa para escudriñar
el vacío arriba –
Draco no está allí,
Draco está en un hueco en la tierra bajo un cedro,
su amigo Orión se sentó en la tumba y lo lloró,
no llega un perrito gris a la hora de la cena,
éstos son hechos.

Pero retiro la vista.
Aquí en este lugar sumergido
el tiempo es una cascada perpetua retumbante,
no existe pasado ni presente ni futuro dolido.
Si quiero lo alcanzo en su nueva morada.
Nos acompañan otras sombras –
mi hermana lectora del espacio,
amigos apenas recordados pero presentes ahora
en su edad sonriente.
El amanecer subterráneo es crepúsculo,
los ángeles se componen de tierra
con alas de escarabajo.
Mi perrito yace entre ellos
respirando sereno.

No tiene aliento,
su corazón se paró, no
va a levantarse.

1.1.23

New Year’s resolution, to write in this diary every day. (I don’t quite believe it, but I’d like to.)

Late December 2022

Hombre Verde

Juntos esperamos que salga el sol
de su forcejeo con las nubes
en la cabecera del valle:
yo, el perrito Loco
brincón como una cabra
y el Hombre Verde, hirsuto y huesudo,
compañero de andanzas por las rocas del río
y los rastrojos de diciembre.

El sol asoma en la franja del cúmulo,
suelto inicia su lento ascenso
por el azul límpido del cielo.
El pelo rojo del perrito se enciende,
los ojos abejorro del Hombre Verde
se colman de un resplandor dorado
rayado de negro intenso, la noche
que persiste aun en el día más espléndido
vinculándolo a la profundidad de la tierra
donde madura su semilla.

Con él escalo el oro de la luz,
con él desciendo a las tinieblas de la concepción.

Green Man

Together we wait for the sun
to break away from his duel
with the clouds at the top of the valley,
I, the little dog Loco,
skittish as a goat,
and the Green Man, hairy and bony,
companion of wanderings over the river rocks
and December stubble fields.

The sun peers over the fringe of the cumulus,
begins his slow free ascent
on the sky’s limpid blue.
The dog’s red coat is on fire,
the bumble bee eyes of the Green Man
are full of golden brilliance
with stripes of intense black,
the night that persists always
on the happiest day,
binding him to the deep earth
where his seed ripens.

With him I scale the light’s gold,
with him I descend to the darkness of conception.

The Shadow

The little dog’s nervous bark
opens the maw of the abyss.

The river rattling and grinding stones
is a big black bull pawing and snorting,
punishment is looming.

I dare to look over my shoulder.
The dog is panting happily,
Sunlight is totality again.

Eternity is crowded

Staring at live pattern
suddenly the film has gone
between eyes and time’s logic.

That’s eternity, I say later.
How many moments in a life touch eternity?
If all such startled instants
in all our lives go there,
how can eternity not be full to bursting?
And what about the animals?
Their eyes are always present.

It’s your eternity, now.
When your eyes have dissolved
nothing will be added to nothing
in the place before anything.

Tags: Mi Diario