Four Poems

Roberto Tejada

The Stranger: We must always make our distinctions so that they cut between the bones.

The Youngster: But Stranger, how can we tell whether we cut between the bones, or not?

—Plato, Statesman

If we recognize the variety and groundlessness

of grounds, if we speak from perplexity as

opposed to portrayal, if we are locked into the one

approach dominant in our time when

problems appeared at the periphery, “our distinctions

so that they cut between the bones,” can we

promise the ethical stand of employing critique

or such assumption as to give voice and image

in light of solace or satisfaction? There is the body

which one and the person for whom.

___________________________________

                There’s a line

of security glass against handgun, crowbar and

baseball bat—is there no bond, none, to what follows?

When from my counted days I think of

times still owed to me by tyrant love,

and my temples await a snowfall

beyond the tribulation of my years

I see love’s counterfeit joys are a poison

reason sips from a crystal glass raised

to those for whom a craving dare appear

in the guise of my honeyed imaginary.

What potion of forgetting pleases

reason that by neglect of its duty

so toils against itself for satisfaction?

But my affliction seeks solace, measure

of the desire to be remedied, and

the desire to overcome it, love’s remedy

Cuando imagino de mis breves días

los muchos que el tirano amor me debe

y en mi cabello anticipar la nieve,

más que en los años las tristezas mías,

veo que son sus falsas alegrías

veneno que en cristal la razón bebe,

por quien el apetito se le atreve,

vestido de mis dulces fantasías.

¿Qué hierbas del olvido ha dado el gusto

a la razón, que sin hacer su oficio

quiere contra razón satisfacelle?

Mas consolarse quiere mi disgusto,

que es el deseo del remedio indicio,

y el remedio de amor, querer vencelle.

[Lope de Vega: Soneto II]

(graffiti)

between exuberance and snow

the uncharted world a patrimony

and prayers repeat the  of our

thinking where the eye directs a

to change the world it contemplates

timbre of my own voice: child

of the imaginary between us, still-

born:        for the exegetes of jesus

to suffer nightless is meaning (so

let the __-__ go buried at our feet)

Field of material contentions and conflicts

in dreams of radical equality | market

by the name of liberal assets unleashing

in patterns uncontrolled so lawless

and brutal a concentration of wealth

and surplus such magnitude of deprivation

ever thriving to be more dissatisfied or

satisfied in a culture at odds internal devoid

of all patterns in civic life neither tolerant

democracy nor the promise of a unified

collective wager will survive its sway

as the final arbiter of the social good.

Prepared all told to safeguard the borders

of external threats to our security

Lingua franca in which this is written

embody the moral bind | include us all