To Jacqueline Santiago Bell
When resettled amid miseries In our habitual, but daily, misfortune Licking our scars, resigned To the end of those days, Without demands, nearly perfect, being scarce, though known. When the light fades slowly almost apologetic Equilibrated, sober within myself, Lazy, condescend in accepting a dubious ineluctable end and wishing indulgently that, at least, the remains of your mortal cover lie in a decent green rectangle pasture somewhere unknown Safe, protected from gusts of winds, Rapacious birds, starving little beast. or vipers attempting to nibble what is left of your fruitful yesterday lips, suddenly from the recondite bottom of my crepuscular drowsiness a click startle me and then a raucous crack of splitting stone the reverse of an inaudible yell flapping the smooth air dragging an obscure tide of voices and amongst them as a quena’s note the unmistakable yours, repeating piercing! Fight back! Resist! Don’t allow them to make us disappear Meanwhile whirls of little dried leafs Sketch howling your face against a motionless Sky And as the apple that falls breaking the pool of still waters in a flash of light I realize - watching rotate in my mind - the macabre merry-go-round of the fratricidal with the glitter-dressed jackals, the mitred effeminated, the shit-ink in togas, the anthropophagical bankers, the megalomaniac henchmen, the plotters, consensuals, concerted; that they can only destroy the flesh and expurgate their own memories. Without casuistical hesitation, Those already identified, convicts of unavoidable evidences, If not them now, sooner or later their children, their grandchildren, the great grandchildren, or their great, great… In this world or the next one, have to come before humanity and answer the primeval question: Where are they? Where is your brother? Where is Jacqueline. Since then, close to obsession I track down after your footprints - Without combing in the mornings - - laying down dressed at dusk - Rambling up and down, and down and up. From here to there, looking for the place, the place, where your soul was snatched, from its broken cocoon asunder, I search for that place to plant your tree; a pine tree, a canelo, or perhaps an alamo a brother tree: the shelter of birds and wanderers; The airfield of itinerant ghosts, living testimony of your reality, - the stubborn proof, that you were once on Earth - While everybody is so busy forgetting, And nobody tells me where you are? I find myself dishevelled insane on the roads, knocking on the shaman’s door, fortune tellers, spiritualists and mediums….asking for you. They spit on me at the Headquarter’s gates. I am ignored at the lobbies of Ministeries… the doormen boot me out. My fingertips are bleeding, my eyes are sore searching, sifting archives – looking for you… I sit at the table with palm readers; astrologers and tarot readers – casting, shuffling cards, scrutinizing crystal balls, activating ouijas… Asking for you. Barefooted covered in ashes, pilgrim do Delfos, Fátima, The Silicon Valley The UN, NASA, The Vatican, The Meca and Lasa – Asking for you. I go inside madhouses. Snooping in confessional boxes I psychoanalized myself, I get drunk I hypnotized myself in peyote – asking for you, I stand in the middle of the square, I chase the gipsy women and they run away – when I ask for you - I stand outside station’s exits, airports, dockyards Holding a polyglot sign, asking for you. I stormed temples, dejected, looking for the true name of God, because the one I invoke, does not answer when I ask for you Empty, exhausted on the dust, entangled in my self desolation, I surrender, weary to infinity; but your image comes as a sting and takes me from my sadness, to nausea and then to rage’s climax, your memory revives in me, as a burning tattoo in my womb, as a nail of ice between my eyes, as a scapular of shadows; Withstanding the erosion of time.
Why don’t they let us know where you are? Whether in the earth, water, or air. Now I walk on tiptoes painfully alert, eager of signals, perhaps, a little broken twig, the ravelled threads of the broken cobweb; a sight, a groan, something, a tiny vestige that gives us back a shade, of your missed presence. Meanwhile we shall weep; here, there, and all over – Everyday – We shall weep to the last tear, We shall cry without tears, without eyes, From the hollow’s eyes socket, when the frost melts down. We shall weep blood from our hearts. Watching the plains fearfuly from the shivering heights, we will cry. Motionless like outlined black crosses against walls of impenetrable arrogance… - We shall weep – In front of the apathetic angels Livid, the faces turned toward the indifferent heavens. Flickering reeds facing an immense ossuary of a leaden merciless sea – we will cry. Before breakfast, at each meal Between soups and tears, looking at your empty chair – we shall weep – Tireless in gruelling shifts; because crying must not stop ( as there are not many who still weep ) like me, who weeps quietly, watching the road, through the open window, from which you shall never come back at any sunset, Jacqueline. We will cry to the end of time, or until justice is done. And when there is nobody left to weep He, who is called the supreme, will be gobbled up by his solitude. And as there is no hidden crime; in the long or short run, we trust in accordance, with the unmanageable alchemy of mystery that seagull’s terror – squads, besiege the executioner’s family on holiday. That a cloud of black butterflies plunged his house in a long night of darkness or that the tears of his pretentious lamp melt down ruining the tapestry Through your martyrdom, Jacqueline, and countless more of the same infamous fashion, we know that the supreme innocence compel to the invention of the supreme crime. The engineers of malice designed the satanic conceptual device: The synonymy disappeared – detainee, creatures, that the longer they are made invisible the less shall they – yield to the ontological deconstruction – to the quicksand of the induced amnesia devouring the immolated beings Nevertheless you, my little Jacqueline And multitudes of our beloved brethren have defeated the blow of death’s claw enkindling our evocations of life surrounding memory with love given that memory’s most secret life is animated by love, making it indestructible.
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