Four Poems by Jorge Carrera Andrade

Transformations

 

My work is bartered between who windows

to the street, in ten meters of worldly ground,

every night in a dish of moon

and one yawn of empty pitchers.

 

All days for me are Mondays:

always beginning, pacing in circles

around myself, in the ten meters

of my rented tomb with its windows.

 

I forsake the world for a chair

eternal where I close

my work of bee and ghost

that changes sighs into money.

 

To buy the sun every Sunday

and keep my country in a closet,

find love in the stairs,

hold up an umbrella to the lightning.

 

My word is bartered in a street,

seller of snouts hung in rows,

between houses which remember well

the color of clothes and the clouds.

 

Inspectors of windows,

lost by myself on the street of signs:

everyday is a journey, going and returning

to anywhere, to the night.

 

The Infinite Trip

 

All begins travel

in distinct ways to their God:

the root walks down the stairs of water.

The leaves with sighs harness the cloud.

The birds use their wings

to reach the zone of eternal lights.

 

The slow mineral with invisible steps

crosses the stages of an infinite circle

that in dust begins and ends in the star,

and to the dust once more returns

remembering the passing, even dreaming

its successive lives and deaths.

 

The fish speaks to his God in the bubble

that is a trill in the water,

the shout of an angel, fallen, deprived of his feathers.

Only man keeps the word

to search for the light

or to travel to that country that lacks echoes of nothingness.

 

Odd Days

 

There are days that dawn very early

with your ox eyes and your forehead cloudy,

without remembering your name,

only mistakes of the week.

 

Days we can’t find the streets and the dates,

they refuse us the light’s pure guidance,

we forget the roses and the numbers,

the windows show us only gloomy images.

 

Lost is the key of treasure,

the watchword of love converted into a ring,

we struggle with letters and memories,

confusing the gloom and our garments.

 

Days of sand that make the clocks succumb,

days when we descend the steps of ash,

when all the walls of the house deny us

and we search in vain for the next.

 

Three Strophes of Dust

 

Your ashy touch wears away all forms,

brother to the night and the tide.

You wrap all objects in one anonymous death

like a return to their original earth.

 

Climb unseen on walls and galleries.

Clothes pale

on their shaded hangers, and clocks

cease suddenly to live at your passing.

 

Secret emissary of ruins,

you model on matter your terrestrial mask.

Nothing can escape dark conquest,

innumerable ally of death.