pedalling

i pedal up the street with a certain pride after stowing the moldy cries of my wife and give pause momentarily to the idea of shooting myself.  if i am free it is because I have come  to substitute air, i believe, and to hate her, and to measure from a distance the city that rots and decomposes.  through the hole left by the idea of a bullet the smaller jokes can be seen.  in between Napoleon and i, for example, only circumstances fit.

my childhood wrapped in a pavilion of perfumes is selling its body to injured soldiers of death. but this placidity comes with a punishment for the furrow left by the dream, no less eternal than the virgin’s corset or the hump of Miguel Angel sleeping on the scaffold.

it could happen–hearing this crippled mirror: one day they will judge me for my actions. i will not be an expatriate. i will not be mouth open on the cement like a bird with broken ears.

although it never bore fruit even my fatal destiny must be fulfilled like that of a flower.

what small difference is there between my two aimless legs that sour the emptiness of the city and those of the Chinaman — kicking on the gallows — when he held back the armored avalanche in the momentarily symbolic Tienanmen Square?

i coordinate movements, i drown heaven below and i watch the livid look of God, the chariot of fire or his two great empty windows through the tunnel that goes — i blow, sometimes sink my fingers, etc. — this impossible shot behind my head.

(From Black Box, Ed. Union, Havana, 2006. Translated by T. Karen)