Living Statue

She judged herself to be marble, but she was living flesh
- Rubén Darío

I

I have a jumble
in my head:
thoughts,
a hat with
spikes and peeling bars
and the image of
a fragrant
woman's leg.
(I say fragrant
but I could also say
succulent,
voluptuous,
velvety,
nubile, or
feverish)
The crumbling
frame that fills me
signifies dispersion,
richness,
not confusion.
I am all
those things:
waste and dreams,
garbage and desire,
beauty,
debris
and a tender
anxiety.

II

To say that we don't live
because we are made of wood,
stone, or bronze
is a
vile slander. I speak in the plural
thinking of
my sisters:
they dwell in the
heart of the paintings,
of the poems,
in the acrobatics
of the dancers,
or they appear
and disappear,
disintegrated,
scattered,
intense,
ineffable,
invisible,
in the effluvia
of music.
Don't we live?
We love,
we dream,
we feel,
startled,
moved
and exalted
by the mysteries
of life,
impregnated
with delicate sensations
and powerful
desires.
Isn't the nostalgia
of the word
and of the flesh
living? It is living in a
purer way
—or should I say less impure?—
more essential,
not so stupid,
and perhaps less perishable.

III

Confined in
this park of willows,
chestnut trees,
gravel paths,
grass,
and wooden benches,
I have a bearable existence,
Still and calm,
though not without compensations
and surprises.
It doesn't bother me
when dogs urinate on me
by lifting
a paw.
It thrills me
when lovers kiss and caress each other
in the shadow
I cast,
when vagrants curl up
at my cardboard-covered feet to weather
the night.
But I hate
the boys
who with sharp knives
scratch and chip me, trying
to rub off their filthy tattoos.
True:
I sometimes suffer
from
my muteness
and my immobility.
In the hot
summers,
I'd like to cool off
in the duck pond,
and in the winters,
sing melodious melodies
or recite
a romantic poem
to the moon.
They are
impossible dreams,
like leaving
on an expedition
to the North Pole
or whisper tender words in
the ear
of that red-haired girl
who contemplates
the geography
of the clouds
and sighs

IV

Besides
making love,
ejaculating
with joy
and force
in the body
of my beloved,
I
would also like
to die.
Immortality
is long
and
boring.
What gives
passion and frenzy
to life
is knowing
that
sooner
or later
it will end.
Sometimes
I am demoralized
by a
premonition:
that
when all
these humans
have been
eaten by worms
and all
the trees
around me
have been charred
by fires,
Withered
by the years
or swept away
by the hurricane winds,
I will still be
here,
fresh
and young,
defying
time
with the serenity
of the stars.

Washington, D.C., October 28, 2003