From this side

To Maythé Rueda, April, 1998

The men that I am in the mirror don’t  talk to each other

neither they live in the mirror

they look at without looking at

they don’t promise

neither they converge in the smoke of your lips

the men that I look in the mirror are innocuous

they clean in silence the white substance of the night

threads of childhood and scum of whispers

the tender death-rattle of bad dreams

bad dreams reverberate rebound like I told you

I told you maybe they will bend like rotten shaft

blackened by the weight of memories

or maybe they will fall one by one

amassing in the muddy madness of a flaky Ganges

so that only the chosen those who flow will survive

only the chosen those who love

with the mouth salted of so much scorn

those who rain in the sidewalk

lacerating themselves without knowing

from what side of their body life is abandoning them

and in their fall maybe it will be allowed

to see the reflection the mirror

the vaporous fate of your gasp your morning groan

the mysterious and round making of your wet hair

the amorphous and distant as homeland flavor of a toothpaste

that you imported from another country and then inhabited

and behind       and far away    and there of the water

and behind       our faces in sepia

clumsy expressions of newcomers

together we appear together

(Those men from space don’t shrink

neither they get tired neither they crawl

from so much amber and reasons

that could justify their deafness or a punishment

they don’t break the crystal of the curse

with the hands of water so they could float like before

perfumed, lost, heavy of orgies and misfortunes

or in a perfect state of agony and fright.)