Translated from the Spanish by María Laura Ramos and Jacob Blakesley
You will always be Friday. A region of absence. Bare shelter for the ineffable.
You will live on fog and will return to it. You will be forest, a night of dark trees. An avalanche of dry leaves. Groove-climbing moss. Inaudible gale. Rumour of birds galloping through the air. You will be desert traversing the emptiness that endures it. A silent blade of grass wandering near the traces of some butterflies. And there will be such a desperate lack of words. The necessary silence. The complicities of grace.
The sorrows of the world will form your shadow. Overwhelmed by pain. You will march alone to every single battle. Desire’s phantoms will stir your prints. The incurable misery of language.
And those who are born here. An anonymous South. Where people babble the language of the poor. Those who are born here. Who, at a loss, accompany you now. Trapped within the paths running through you. Bewilderment at the lack of voices. Surprised when searching for what they do not know. Hungry seagulls among the furrows made by your plough. They follow you instinctively, blindly. Pilgrims, they move senselessly in an unsteady dance. Labile. Stripped of themselves, they move around what is going to name you. They persisted in braiding their movement to the travels of your astonishment.
They will take childhood trips with you. Until they savour emptiness in every single thing. Voices’ muffledness. The sound of the world. The wonder of landscapes. The desolation of what is human. Four trips. Almost migrants of themselves. Four pilgrim paths. Their wakes will knit the eternal journey of those coming back.
1.
Fate will be disappointment and surprise. You will jump over the ditches of that failure. And you will wander around a frayed morning. In which the fable of some prescribed destiny will be a shattered relic. Then bewilderment will tear open a wick of marvels. You will cross a great river, carried by the vertigo of the encounter. And other coasts will offer you a brief refuge in the fragments of this long night. Fleeting journey of life. The scarce seriousness of games will tie a knot around the outline of these days. There will be archery tournaments. Then. The arrows shot by your bow will imitate the action of ploughing. Your hand digging for words in the ash. In the scent of a slow afternoon. You will roam about the debris of a bull ring. Along blood rites sunk in old gravel. You will celebrate its demise. The memory of animal pain will hurt you. And at night. On the shores of that great river. You will play the game of who you are. The eyes of poetry will tempt you. The memory of your African diaspora. The wind from the South will blow. You will be there. Wrapped in the whispering of water. The dance of friends. Under coarse wool coats. And around a bonfire of sand and logs. Your words, together with others, will repeat the ancient gesture. You will tell stories that are yours without being so. You will ignite the magic of memory. The singing of origins. Voices that still rock us to sleep in the mystery of witnessing the silence always inaugurating human storytelling.
2.
Even after overcoming your initial resistance. You will accept visiting the suburbs’ extreme poverty. Down to the bottom of abandonment. Where being free is a transient ghost. You will go through the entrance rites of prison. And you will cross one fence after another. Narrowness will become horizon. Where there is a glimpse of hands held together, lifting up their desires. They dream the dream of crossing what is impossible. You will follow the guard’s steps, a rattling of keys and doors opening and closing. Escorted by weary eyes. Almost beleaguered. From the iron bars walling in the corridors. You will reach the encounter with total privation. Emancipated simulation. Perhaps. Seed of another life. Blank pages were engraved there with ink from one’s own and other people’s suffering. You will be received in silence. Everybody there will wait for your words. The mystery of your voice. They imagine how you master your speech. Which will open windows in the walls of shadow. From other far-away southern lands. Also hurt by ignominy. Lack of love for that land demolished by the knives of other languages. Languages that today are yours. Everybody there will wait for your words. Like a warm autumn dazzle in the freezing morning. And they will be disappointed. You will offer them your typical mutism. The ceremonies of being quiet. Puzzled, they will take some time before savouring the gifts of silence. The respect of their breath. That gracious gesture in human speech. Being willing. Knowing. Loving the craft of listening. Letting your ignorance be washed by their words. Still disconcerted by your quietness. Intimidated. They will read the poetry of their bodies. And only time. Or years perhaps. The miracle they took part in will be revealed in the embers that remain. Being. Once. Paid attention to. With mutual admiration of those recognising themselves as equal. Then. On the final crest of those rites. Modest celebration of a definitive brotherhood. At the end of the meetings. You will reserve only one word for them. In your most authentic style. The exasperating doubt. The doubt of not knowing, with no certainty. By what chance, fate is the way it is. Interchangeable. By what chance, fate did not root you to the place where they will be now.
3.
When dusk inquires from your eyes. When your only answer is terror. When silence is the only truth. Then. Fortunately. You will avoid sinking into that dense spirit. The blindness of fear. The idiocy of knowing. The inner door to purposeful steps. Against the light. What it is will be seen. Hills will tell colours. The wind will howl quietness. The river’s drought will talk about thirst. Animals will write their meek cadences in the air. Everything will become the ancient memory of what it was. A huge desert sweating the salt of seas that will no longer exist. Whiteness that invites you to keep silent. And there. Sky-blue water. Transparent. Beauty’s poison. Flooding your rough landscape. And silent will be the pain of centuries postponing destinies to what is human. The incense of their music will remain. The soul will be a dream fighting against itself. And, in doing so, a dance will give you life at every instant. You will dig up your own lost rhythm. You will celebrate the mysteries of absence. Far away from lights. Under a sky inundated in fire. You will see, through shadow, that land’s most genuine root. And those, your journey companions. Insolent. They will get drunk on scarcity. Dancing future among the flames of your moon.
4.
In the guts of a wet zone. Made of coldness. Chiselled with tropical wounds. Under the severity of sunburn. Where clouds of light protect the enormous darkness. They transform the thick and dark air. A mingled mass of primordial splendour. At the boundary of fights that resist the explosion of this world’s seasoning. A jelly of stars made of steam. The vast mass of hair of a blurry transparence. They will receive you. In the warmth of a deep fibre of affinities. Birds will greet you here. Unknown animals will avoid your steps. Even. Monkeys will defeat your sound judgment. You will walk around a gigantic maze of vegetation sealed from the dumbness of unprepared eyes. You will follow, quite unconsciously, the sunken tracks of travellers that knew about that land and its mysteries. They trafficked constant rains. They learned to be brave. The talent of tracking. The skill of hunting. They knew about the leaf that heals, about the hidden honeycomb, about the fish in the mud. They discovered the poison that kills. They sang their achievements and celebrated through their people the spirit of every beast. You will walk under the jet-black sparkle of that look. Wet in the ways of producing light. Among blue scents. You will walk tenacious severity of silence. You will sail along its Great River. Splashed with smiles. Fascinated by the embrace of water. From their love bonds, forest murmurs were born. Hundreds of sweet mirrors from the sky. The marvellous fall of water. The booming sound of music. They celebrate your arrival so the tremors of this South nest in your eyes. And know that you are not alone. You will take with you the beat of these whispers. The shelters of affection. The caress of respect. And your indigent pilgrims will dance the movements that make bodies lighter. They will recover the necessary strength to paint rough textures in the air. Puppets of fate towards the islands of bravery. In that dance that gives music to your quietness they will renew the vigour of living. They will rehearse the art of being born. From your memory. They will learn how to set off with a new direction after each failure.
You will always be Friday. Following a knot you cannot find. Drawn by ungraspable cisterns of drought. The emptiness of this burning drives you. I am here. In your frightened bird eyes. I am here. In the indecisive pulse of your hands. I am the prowling rhythm of your syllables. A fire of ineffable longings. I am writing today what will be your yesterday.
Between the years 2014 and 2017, John was in Argentina with us as the holder of the chair named after him and dedicated to the literatures of the South. During that time, together with other friends and colleagues, we took four trips with him that turned out to be crucial for us. When we returned, we were no longer the same. The destinations: Colonia del Sacramento, in Uruguay; San Martín Prison, Quebrada de Humahuaca and Iguazú Falls, in Argentina. This text is about that time. The poetry of having experienced it.
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* The words ‘an interlude of stillness’ come from J. M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country, section 31.