Dare to be able to be brave,
and don’t stop—

dare to be able to be old,
for if you have children
a testament will
keep them on a tight reign

Dare to be able to not want
to be testate in a world that is coming

If you have excess children,
arrange a war

Dare to be able
to employ immigrant workers

They will use your
wages to buy vinegary wine
that will rot their
teeth in three years’ time

Fear not: you yourself
take the opium of the rich

(opium you get
from Scotland and from Rome)

Dare to be able to have
enemies on your payroll

You, new boy,
have faith in the coming years

You’ll have plenty
of time to make Virgilian friends
that will bequeath
you Aeneids to save.

Dare to be able to
become an august personage,
when you have time.

And today, Octavio, boy,
dare to be able
to slit Cicero’s throat.

Bearded Alfonso, emperor of Spain,
cousin of a Saint,
and yourself a Sage,
take note, wiser men than you
will come to write history,
and brand you a bad king:
you have lost them a dirty battle
that they ventured to make their own.

Take note, general,
a homeland ventures
to place great hopes in you.

No, don't dare
to be able to lose battles.

Although you
don't need to win all of them.

If you have napalm
to spread on Northern fields,
dare to be able
to lose wars in the South.

•

I.

In human form
and inhabited by language,
I roll the dice
and open the books.
No one dances with conviction.
Arms are raised only
to strike with hands,
not to write any sign.
In the details of the fire, I see
the resemblance of a face.
Each steps on the next one’s feet.
The fruit is peeled but not eaten.
The flags are the colour of chaos,
and the snake is the love of the living.
The salt does not preserve the sea,
nor do the letters fit the work.
The proof is that power forms the only centre
and the world produces artifices
to support its own conclusions (and means
of speculation), which should be abandoned.
The strength of rocks is in not thinking.

I write signs and letters
on ox skin.

Bring to mind the earth,
the sky and the water
and throw sand on a mirror
to look at its capricious forms
or to draw in it a letter.

Year after year,
I scratch at the earth with my nails
so I can cut out the shadow
ahead of me
and penetrate the roots.


¶


Amid hieroglyphics and figures
I shape the egg of the world
on a potter’s wheel.
People sweep evil under the carpet
and stretch out their necks
and stretch out their legs.
Beyond this scene,
I think again
of the way that some horns spiral.
Having seen transformed
a stone into a scorpion,
I no longer confirm nor contradict,
but find myself face-to-face with myself.

And me, who takes care of me?

I am in the middle of an esplanade
but no movement takes me anywhere,
nor does the recourse to some ceremony
prove anything to me.
The only thing I have to do
is imagine great forests
or the smoke from some grass.
But, if you go too far away,
you might not return.
I intend to follow this path
and not let myself be consumed,
night and day,
by the ground that others choose
with no real instinctive force.
I mean to imitate nothing with these clothes
nor do I care to cast a shadow anywhere with a weapon,
because in the name of all things
I see my real name,
and I want to keep secret
the number of its letters
and its three initials.