"Magical Thinking" and Other Poems

The bear out of a fairy tale makes for a mean dictator.In its enormous den it keeps secret nuclear larders,barrels filled with dead water.It instructs the cat how to abduct young girls,staying undercover, keeping warm in a trench at night,navigating overgrown orchards and kitchen gardens.The cat's indignant:“But I know you're killing them!Why, I'd never . . . ”Still, it goes.In the evenings the bear studies history textbooks.The storerooms fill with radiant light.It seeps out and makes his eyes water.Death is bright. Time to go for a hunt,time to fill up the larder.As for the girls, the bear really does love them.In the duskall are equalIn the duskit's all the sameeveryone's the samePick your spot, keep calm, aimFireAnd once againFire(your target—it has a name)FireAnd one more timeFire(your target—it's got a body)Trigger-happy cupid,tiny wings speckled with blood—it's your own death you are taking downLook, you're becoming a thing that's goodat livingPerfect, without a wrinklewith your pupils contracted to a pinpointyour fingers supple and confidentyou are wholeand well orderedan instrument of loveStill the same hand, but now it's holding a gun.Used to the strings—can't you sing this oneproving your skill in flattery and in pride?Voice is breaking. No need for a rhyme.Already you're detested by powers that be—sullen stare of a steely eye.Here I am, turning red like a flag,shivering—how I treasure my animal tremor!—waving my body back and forth,hoping the State cures me with its power.Try singing yourself, song! Don't dare gagon a handsome bait, a shiny hook.Readily I renounce my name, my face.In the trolling spoon of the scepter and orb I discernsplendor beyond compare.Don't revolve, come closer, stay still, be mine . . . Pushing others out of the way, I swallow—Fatherland—sweet deep heaviness in my throatroaring, hollow.If only I could appeal to some grand commonplace,hand out slogans, like “Voice to the people!”or “Land and freedom!”—glossy currencieswith a face on the one side, a number on the other.Earth grows restless, quivers as after a heavy song.It has not yet been properly eulogized.But properly fed it got.A man with a bodyfeels shame in the presence of the disembodied.A man without a gunroars at the guns, as if in dialogue.“Now Autonomous!”bodily organs announce, solemnlyinaugurating imagined integrity.Yet a phantom pain continues to demandthat I be a part of a unitythat is no more.I've always done well as a body, but as for being a citizen,I'm more of an amateur: I obey the law, I follow the signs,I bow before the gray stalks of monumentalist architecture,I honor prohibitions, State TV shows, imported divinities.While the enemy's being bombed, I fall asleep peacefully.I sincerely plan to die an old man in my own bed.I have no reason to think I will not succeed.That is, I'll make it out in one piece, as a warm body.Armies will clash, and the State will triumph.Death makes enemies equal, but not the same.Equally dead, equally lost to others.Scattered LEGO-men with interchangeable limbs.Sometimes my body acts as if it wants to be separate from me,like a broken finger, barely held by the skin.Let me go, it gurgles, you worthless pool of waste!Keep calm, bloody carrion, I hiss at it.What's wrong with this god that does not get appeasedby the rich nourishment, a live sacrifice, the warm trickle of blood?Who is this strange god of oursunswayed by the smell of the burning flesh,taking the side of the weak?Our weapons rust. Our bodies rot.Here's a god without history, lordof the borderlands, of the famished seasons.A god with no throne, without a crusade of angels.God of losers, of private battles, god of the secret wounds.God of the powerless, of the raped and the tortured.This one—without an anthem, without a flag,whose image never gets stamped onto precious metals.I was born in . . . —but I am toldit's a matter of indifference, a historical mishap.Our capital denies the existence of any borders.Dipping its fingers into five seas,it sprawls, victorious, west and east.Like a large body in motion,it cannot stop its inertia.In the heart of the common heart there burns a firean eternal fire, eternal fire.It's a tireless fire that burns in a land full of gods.Once or twice in a century the icons come to lifeand radiant saints step downto ride in the tanksor some other heavy military equipment.Speech—who could blame it?—lags behind:I'm a flag you raise, a loudspeaker amplifyingthe barking inside your throat.I drape over you, concealing spots and tears,richer, much richer than blood.Aren't the missiles lovely, exploding in the sky?Don't they look like asters forcing their way upand like braids of beautiful maidenscoming down?Doesn't the battlefieldmake you feel like you're drunkon magnificent wine?Watch the flag posts sprouting!Hear the nightingales and oriolestrapped inside our vowels!Don't worry, you can still sign your namewhile I take over the poem,unencumbered by your sweet scruples.Whatever you say about me: that I am a deserter,devious and deceptive, that I steal someone else's memories,that I salute the flag that happens to be higher up,that I take no prisoners . . . Well, just watch me wieldthis power, tokened in you,powerless to stop me

Art · Literature · Poetry · Literature, Magical Realism, García Márquez · Philosophy