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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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