Stumble between Two Stars
(For Spanish translation click here)
There are people so racked they no longer feel
their bodies; quantitative the hair
let down, inch by inch, weighing with genius;
the mode, angular, upright;
don’t look for the grindstone of oblivion,
they seem to come out of air, to sum up sighs mentally, to hear
the sharp blows of their words in their palates!
Shedding their skin, scratching at the sarcophagus in
which they were born
rising up by their death hour by hour
to fall, through the depth of their frozen alphabet, to
the ground.
Ah for so much! Ah for so little! Ah for all women!
Ah in my room listening to them with glasses!
Ah in my thorax when they buy suits!
Ah for my white grime, joined with their scum!
Beloved be the ears of the sanchez,
beloved be those who recline,
beloved be the man unknown and his wife,
neighbor with sleeves, collar and eyes!
Beloved be he who has bedbugs,
the one wearing torn shoes under the rain,
who keeps watching over the corpse of a bread with two matches,
the one watching his finger caught in a door,
the one with no birthdays,
who’s lost his shadow in fire,
the animal, the one who looks like a parrot,
the one who looks like a man, the poor rich,
the pure miserable, the poor poor!
Beloved be
the one who has hunger or thirst, but has no
hunger with which to satisfy all his thirst,
neither thirst with which to satisfy all his hungers!
Beloved be he who works by day, by the month, by the hour,
the one who sweats from pain or from shame.
the one who goes, by command of his hands to the movies,
the one who pays sleeps with what he lacks,
the one who sleeps on his back,
the one who no longer remembers his childhood; beloved be
the bald man without a hat,
the just man without thorns,
the thief without roses,
the one who wears a watch and has seen God,
the one who has honor and does not die!
Beloved be the child that falls and still cries
and the man who has fallen and no longer cries!
Ah for so much! Ah for so little! Ah for all men!
11 October 1937