from Toward Muteness

Sergio Espinosa

                    Translated by Kelsi Vanada

not to be whole makes you no monster
to ignore the pain makes you a monster it doesn’t
build the body amidst attempts and losing
balance vast beast don’t count the days
who taught you to sleep I ask do you know how to sleep
this endless trial isn’t the calculated leap
to your hunger to the priapism of your bloody mask

this calculated pain taught you to ignore the balance
to sleep between your endless  mask
and this priapic monster who makes you a beast
I ask you attempt to lose the days
you don’t know about your bloodied hunger
a monster won’t let you sleep don’t count the body not the leap no
to be whole is to build a  vast trial


 

 

 

 

 

with you I smell salt
with you I glimpse what
with you I smell salt and hear children
and their strange elation that doesn’t shut off and so
I wanted to light all the streetlamps with my chest

with you breathing could come before the song
with you there’s no restraint
why how under what sky
I’ve given beds I’ll magnetize wild animals

but sometimes you want to die sometimes
I owe mankind and you owe my word

you’ll tame your foundering no doubt

 

 

 

 

 

 

with you I owe mankind I owe air
night shuts off
I’ve magnetized children to a pair of streetlamps
I can forget salt

with you I’d like to draw  my word in and  tame
with you there’s no restraint and foundering requires
fewer reasons under the sky

you want to light yourself up by day and so I
glimpse with my chest what why how

with you I hear and with you I smell
what beds could salt come before
with you strange elation
all wild animals I’ll give
for how many to how many too many

their song has a time to end

and sometimes I smell dying but sometimes with you
I don’t