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THE TRUE VOYAGE
Watch
out! Watch out!
We are on the verge of shipwreck.
You
have believed
we travelled on a powerful transatlantic
however, I tell you:
my life is a small enamoured raft.
I
see, emerging from the shadows, true,
a light that no-one will extinguish.
Made of verse
and perfumes like unfathomable winds,
like a waterfall of abandoned flesh
which encounters at last its kingdom.
A kingdom of clouds,
of fragrances old and fragrances inconceivable.
Small enamoured rafts always on the verge of shipwreck.
For
the time being it will be passion to row,
until the poem is attained in the movement of it.
Afterwards, some other day, you will have
in your small enamoured raft, your great loves.
Row,
until you are devoid of strength and then
you will understand the reason for my passion.
We
shall travel on the most beautiful rivers and with time,
we shall dare to set out on the great oceans,
toward the beauty of full tempests at sea
and always, we shall go in fear of disappearing,
small as we are, in the surrounding immensity.
To
know how to swim or how to be great, will serve for nothing
we shall need to keep the raft afloat, to arrive
we shall need to keep ourselves on top of the raft.
That is all the mystery.
One
day the raft will split into a thousand fragments
and all of us
will have to learn to keep afloat on small splinters.
If
the poem is possible life is possible.
Row,
until it is agony to row,
until you feel that it is impossible alone.
Remain strengthless,
see how others row and how I myself row,
my hands gone bloody with the effort,
without rest
until in the movement of it I suddenly come upon the poem!
And
each shall have his small enamoured raft.
In charge of his life and of his death
he can lie himself down on the raft for ever,
not row any more and let the waters take him where they please.
And some other person,
desperately rowing, on seeing him,
will write a poem.
It is
no use to row in any sort of direction.
The
land that poetry offers is always the same land.
One arrives or does not arrive.
She needs kings, centaurs,
will only let itself be sown by revolutionaries and fanatics,
by men who in their own lands
build their homes and their families, their great hopes.
Whoever repeats what is already done will never arrive there.
Row
to reach that land,
as nobody has rowed before,
and you will be offered on your arrival
such spreads as have never been offered to anyone.
And in the nights of disenchantment,
when nothing is possible in that darkness,
ask your elders to tell you
about the great navigators, about their ancient deeds,
in small paper boats.
Every
stretch travelled shall have its own perils.
Nothing will be easy for the poet.
Love will come and it will be necessary to love
till one feels in the flesh the ultimate pain.
And upon coming to that place,
it will be necessary to love even further, until one feels
that the flesh trembling is a poem.
And thus shall come the unforgettable night,
the unforgettable day,
where for a moment the passion
shall be the poetry.
In
the face of doubt not to stop rowing.
Take
in our arms,
fortified like claws by the cruelty of the exercise,
the loved person and keep on rowing,
if necessary with our teeth.
With time,
she too will take exercise with us.
Afterwards, by twos, by threes, by everyone,
the immensity of the unique broken,
death shall come.
And no bravery will be of any use,
because she boasts of
having killed all the brave,
in her first encounter with them.
Nor will cowardice be of any use,
because she kills everything that tries to escape.
To
meet with death, you need
to have learnt something from love:
Not fly away. Attack nothing.
Learn to talk quietly,
that is the teaching of love.
When
she approaches and comes for us,
her look immense as she herself is immense,
let her approach until she can hear
our breathing made short by the encounter.
And moved, as her custom is,
she will extend her hand,
so that we can accompany her majesty,
to the immutable reign of silence.
There, where surrender is easy, to look at her,
-in her eyes the immensity that she possesses-
and say to her through our teeth:
Loved death, my beloved,
I shall write your name on all walls,
shall kiss your lips without fear,
as no man has ever done,
and love you, you will see, in the very blood,
in the great catastrophes
and I shall love you furthermore
when a white blossom reigns in your heart.
The great emotion
running along her great black mantle,
when she finds herself of a sudden in a poem,
makes of death a woman.
She too will end up rowing quietly to the shore
and share with me my bread and my loves
and fly her way by night to offer her shelter
to those who have stopped rowing already, and will return,
to meet with me again and tell me of her feats.
As if
each time were the first,
I shall breathe again as athletes breathe
and because I learnt it from her,
I shall look at her tenderly and say:
My beloved death,
and she,
shall be happy.
After
this one must continue to row.
It
will soon be asked of us and we shall say:
we have been with love and we have been,
too, with death.
At first we shall not be believed,
it will be said that for man this is impossible,
we shall be asked for proofs,
we shall show them as if we were showing them the sky,
a few poems
and with this gesture we shall
bring upon ourselves, the time of mockery.
Great vessels looking for nothing
-they believe they have everything-
shall pass time and again by our side,
trying to sink with their play
our small enamoured raft.
They will call to us
from their luxurious vessels,
using the names that are used to name rubbish.
Poets. Lunatics. Assassins.
And in the senseless gabbling of their play,
all will be possible.
They will cast stones at us and say to each other
that nothing offends them and furiour
will shout at us: fight, cowards, defend yourselves.
And
after a thousand times and another thousand,
eyes bursting out of their sockets from the weariness
and also from the astonishment of seeing
our small enamoured raft
continuing on its way and ourselves,
quietly on it, rowing.
After
having crossed unharmed
the path of mockery,
what will come, I assure you, is the time of gold.
And
they, bored with their own laughter,
will want to play our game.
What is the price of this wood that is on the point of rotting
and which you use as a ship? And how much is your life worth?
And how much these old navigational charts?
And how much these poems?
Their price, sir,
is the price a man has to pay
when he stops belonging to himself to surrender to the poem;
what money is that worth?
All and none,
his own life, perhaps.
How much money is my life worth, then?
All and none,
his life is made of words like all lives
and that, I understand, is valueless.
And how much money does it cost to think this way?
All and none,
it is better to go under,
to row
and expect nothing.
That is the cost,
to go under and expect nothing,
in the obscure regions,
heading toward a greater darkness,
the poem.
Once
they have fallen for each other, love and death,
once gold and mockery have been rejected for their impurity,
out of nowhere will come to us,
because it has always lived in us,
madness.
She is the worst of all straights,
appears without warning,
because it is her fateful law, to surprise,
it is not her intention to flight, she brings the wish
to befriend the poet.
And when she arrives,
she says in whispers
that her world and the world of poetry
are the same heaven.
In
the face of doubt, one must keep on rowing.
Shapeless
she lets herself be molded by our words,
and with time she also achieves a greatness.
I am
of love, she says, the unreinable
and eternal passion of death.
It is my custom to despise gold,
but nevertheless,
the urge to kill generated by her laws,
is intoxicated with madness.
In that,
she and poetry are alike.
As soon as they have come together in our sight,
as if they were one sole being,
poetry,
the old sea-wolf,
rows away for a stretch with us to show us,
that madness, ever since she arrived,
has stayed in the same corner of our small raft,
not rowing,
but brooding all the rime over her past.
Happy
to have understood the difference,
we enclose madness in a poem
and continue to row until one day,
convinced of her incapacity for navigation,
we give her over to love and death,
so that madness,
may learn to fly.
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