Not satisfied with the sight of bodies placed side by side, they powered up the tractors and started crushing bones beneath the machinery, folding and re-folding until anonymity was achieved. Years later, experts went down there on hands and knees, digging up limbs powdered and scattered like the kitchenware of a lost culture. One of them peered up at the impossibly blue sky and remarked at the wind, What a nice place to fly kites. Somewhere in the four hundred bags they had filled so far was the boy who once ran on this field, burning his fingers with the beauty of ascension. The interns always cried whenever the bags were sieved. In the white glare of the examination rooms, the bones and the pottery shards looked the same.

A mother had already been handed four hollow pieces of her child’s rib cage, and days after the burial, she was seen walking around the clearing, at one point bending down to pick up a pebble. The place was sacred to her. Every piece of the place was sacred to her. During a storm, as she held on to the walls of her house, the wind gave her an idea and now she respected every open ground. Who knew how strong a wind could blow? Who could foresee the extent of a body’s transformation? She put an end to the habit of kicking at loose soil whenever she was angry or pensive. Her face took on the shape and lines of a tourist lost in an unknown land, peering at eyes, searching, searching. This could be my child, she whispered to herself, and held the pebble close to her chest.

When we saw the city,
We believed again in time.
Line of the tall spires and the bend
Of a bright sky.

We believed again in space.
Light of the large looms
and the roof of the great eye.
We believed again in perfectibility
(if not perfection), in the fresh
(if not the new).

We named it progress. The past
was not warm, so we named it dead.
We named everything we could not touch

Passed. We believed
Again in what was large.
Might of the long road and
The risk of the big wish.
When we made the step back.

Look. There. Clear measure
Of the flock on the far tip,
Of all the missed trips.
When we saw the city—

“I see people looking like trees and walking,” said the blind man,
after Jesus touched him the first time.
What he said baffled even the human god.
“They are walking around with arms outstretched,” he said.
“Their palms brush the sky. The stars slip through their long fingers.
The moonlight spills into a river and darts away like a school of silver fish
while the leaves moan in the trees in a hundred human voices.
Branches argue with wind. Locusts buzz in the night’s tangled hair.”
He asked in wonder, “Is this the world?”
Then the god lifted his holy palms, wet with spit,
and held them over the man’s eyes.
Twice touched by him, the man muttered, “Wait.”
But already he was healed.

It’s now a century, since
Keats heard the soft pipes play
A darkling tune,
Blowing and breathing
From cold marble stone.
Now the cold stars burn
Blue holes above this slope,
And she cries, “Old magic trick! That star’s
No more―its light
Is from a million years ago!”
The thought I render sotto voce
Is spoken to the past―
Another time, another place
Catapulting, star-like,
To this young girl on the slope,
That far child that she was,
Crying out (as now)
A startled praise:
(“A Look, a rambler rose-vine hung with bloom!”)
That past day flinging here, star-fashion,
So that finished rose and vanished star,
In a wondering cry,
Endure as one.

The height of graffiti in bathroom stalls.
The heart’s crude affection etched on a tree.

On sidewalk pavements, initial encounters.

Sometimes a name, sometimes a number
Where you could be reached. Imaginary or otherwise

You were here.

You are here. Addressing the fine
Print of certificates, walking

Papers: the many forms to fill out
Before you fill in.

Let me be the first to say
that I know the name for everything
and if I don’t I’ll make them up:
dukkha, naufragio, talinhaga.
Just like the young
whose hearts give no shame,
I love the excesses of beauty,
there is never enough sunlight
in the world I will live in,
never enough room for love.

I fear none of us will last long enough
to prove what I’ve always suspected,
that the sky is a membrane
in an angel’s skull,
trees talk to each other at night,
ice is water in a state of silence,
the embryo listens to everything we say.

I am afraid for the child skipping rope
on the corner of my street,
the girl on the train with flowers in her hair,
the man whose memory is entirely
in Spanish. I am more afraid of losing consciousness
when I go to sleep, or that in my sleep
I will grow old and forget how desire
once drove me mad with wakefulness.

Just like the perfect seasons
they will die
and I will die
and you will die also;
no one knows who will go first,
and this is the source
of all my grief.

Inside the story is a garden with a pear tree, the view of a house with a staircase and mahogany desks. Inside the house is a woman with her back against the windows, her body bent over her child inside a crib, her body leaning against a table as she fixes the fruit in a bowl.

From the back of the room, somebody mentions foreshadowing, somebody makes distinctions between image and symbol. The board is filled with words.

Inside the story is a dinner part the woman hosts, the idle talk of guests, the moment her husband leans toward the body of another woman. She watches her husband and his small gesture, the drawing room unable to contain her sudden knowledge. Inside the story, the woman turns away from the climax, turns to the windows and the pear tree outside, the symbol of her life, the tree in full bloom, the tree caught in shadows.

We talk about the tragedy of false notions, the link between discovery and despair, the joy of understatement. When there is a knock on the door, a request to take a minute of our time, I say sure. We are inside the story, and to the students outside, I say, sure, come on in.

What they pass around is a can, a sheet of paper, a request for loose change and volunteers to dig for bodies. A few miles away, the residents of a dumpsite are dead, their bodies buried in an avalanche of trash. Inside the story, the woman cries, what will happen to me now?

On the first day, the dying tried to raise their voices above the weight of their own tin roofs. The digging was slow, the voices stopped. Inside the story, the woman fixes fruit in a bowl — apples, oranges, and grapes. She arranges and rearranges fruit, draping the grapes on the rim, balancing the oranges on apples.

The relatives need bodies for a proper burial. The can grows heavy. The students pause carefully upon the sheet, and the others say think about it, we have a booth on the third floor, you don’t have to sign up now. Inside the story there is a woman, a house, a man, a pear tree. Inside the story is a house, a bowl full of fruit. Some students are braver than others. They write their names down.

The woman leans the sadness of her body against the window, tries to look beyond the pear tree. Inside the story, she sees nothing but darkness. She is ungrateful for the luxury of despair.

The rubber tree by the boulevard is sad
and so is the acacia behind the rubber tree.
The whole world seems about to rain.
My love has left me, she is gone.
 
The water, ashen as always, is sad
and so are the three rusty ships by the bay,
and behind them, the clouds like melting lead.
My love has left me, she is gone.
 
The coconut leaves droop,
delicately swaying
to the wind that lashes, the playing
children unmindful
of sadness’ edge that is sharp like a knife, like a razor.

And I remember a song full of despair,
like a stinging wound squeezed some more.
And I remember my love who has gone
like a cloud pausing for some time,
then moving on to its many journeys through the sky
and which I think will never, never again pass  by.
 
trans. Mikael de Lara Co

Lumbay

Nalulumbay ang puno ng goma sa gilid ng bulibard
at ang puno ng akasya sa likod ng goma.
Mukhang uulan sa buong mundo.
Wala na ang mahal ko, iniwanan ako.
 
Nalulumbay ang tubig na laging kulay-abo
at ang tatlong bapor na kulay-kalawang sa laot,
at sa likod, ang ulap na parang tinggang natunaw.
Wala na ang mahal ko, iniwanan ako.
 
Nakatungo ang mga dahon ng niyog,
marahang pakampay-kampay
sa hanging humahampas, naglalarong
anaki’y mga batang walang kamalay-malay
sa talas-kutsilyo, talas-labaha ng lumbay.
 
At naalala ko ang isang awit na puno ng hinagpis,
parang sugat na humahapdi, lalong tinitistis.
At naalala ko ang wala nang mahal ko
na naparaan sa aking mundo,
parang ulap na bumitin nang ilang saglit,
saka nagpatuloy sa maraming lakad sa himpapawid
at, sa tingin ko, hindi na, hindi babalik.

1.

In this room I was born. And I knew I was in the wrong place: the world. I knew pain was to come. I knew it by the persistence of the blade that cut me out. I knew it as every baby born to the world knows it: I came here to die.

2.

Somewhere a beautiful woman in a story I do not understand is crying. If I strain hard enough I will hear a song in the background. She is holding a letter. She is in love with Peter. I am in love with her.

3.

Stand on the floor where it’s marked X. I am standing by your side where it’s marked Y. We are a shoulder’s length apart. I’m so close you can almost smell the perfume. If I step ten paces away from you, there could be a garden between us, or a table and some chairs. If I step another 20 paces there could be a house between us. If I continue to walk away from you in this way, tramping through walls and hovering above water, in 80,150,320 steps I will bump into you. I can never get away from you, and will you remember me? Distance brings us closer. There is no distance.

4.

In 1961 I was in Berlin. It was a dusty Sunday in August. In the radio news was out that Ulbricht had convinced Khrushchev to build a wall around West Berlin. I remember it precisely: By midnight East German troops had sealed off the zonal boundary with barbed wire. The streets along which the barrier ran had been torn up. I lived in that street. It was the day after my birthday. I remember the dust covering the sky. I remember being scared. Father had not returned from the other side. The Kampfgruppen der Arbeiterklasse had orders to shoot anyone who would attempt to defect. Father had not returned.

5.

Happiness is simple.
Sadness forks into many roads.

6.

Before the time of Christ, Aristotle believed that the earth was the center of the universe because he needed a stationary reference point against which to measure all other motions: a rock falling, a star reeling through the sky, his heart beating against his chest like a club. He needed to believe in certainty, in absolute space. Without it, the world would not be known absolutely. Without it, the world cannot be known.

Twenty centuries later Hendrik Lorentz needed to believe that every single molecule in the universe must move through a stationary material called the aether, as every human being in his various turnings must move through God. Scientists looked everywhere for proof of this aether. And everywhere they found nothing.

7.

I have sometimes been accused of being a bore. I beg to differ: people laugh at my jokes, and I’m handsome. I would like now to talk more about myself: I don’t like going to airports and hospitals. They make me uneasy. In both cases, somebody is always going to leave. I was born in 1983, and have never been to Berlin. But I have a memory of being in Berlin in 1961. I have a memory of something that never happened.

I would like to elaborate on myself, but you will understand if I talk instead about the sky in Berlin in 1961: it was covered with dust. There were no birds. There was no sky.

8.

Memory is brutal because precise.

9.

She said: give me more space. I said: don’t you love me anymore? She said: give me more space. I said: why? Did I do something wrong? Is there something wrong? Is there someone else? When did you stop loving me? In what precise moment? In what room? What city?

I held her tight as one who’s about to lose his own life holds on. Then she said: give me more space. I said: no.

10.

I have only one purpose: to live intensely.

11.

I wish I never met you
and I wish you never left.

You taste like a river in June.

12.

I’m going to say something important. Look at my face. Ignore my eyes. Just listen to me. But listen only to the timbre of my voice, not to what I am saying. They are different. They are two different rooms. The first is an exhibition of despair, the second only an explanation.

The first is all you have to listen to. So listen carefully because I cannot repeat myself:

“Everything/ one suspects to be true/ is true.”

13.

In 1879 a boy is born in Germany. At age five he’d throw a chair at his violin teacher and chase him out. In time he would develop the capacity to withdraw instantaneously from a crowd into loneliness. At twenty-six he would publish his theory of relativity in Annalen der Physik. He looks crazy, but he is certain: there is no aether, no absolute space.

14.

Sometimes they thought it was the words.
What they wanted to say could not be said.

They fixed the TV, vacuumed the rug,
dusted the furniture, looked out the window.

Sometimes she would purposefully lose hold of
a plate and it would smash to the floor.

Then they would have something to say,
only to begin to say it then stop.

15.

Look at this box. It is empty except for a diary, a book, and this picture in my hand. Now look at this picture. It weighs nothing and occupies almost zero space. I can slip it in anywhere and it will fit: inside the diary, under the box, through a crack on the wall. If I tear it several times, it will occupy a different volume, many and various. It mutates, you see. If I burn it, it will smoke into the air. It will take up a whole expanse.

16.

How many more times
are you going to let the world
hurt you?

17.

My father is an incorrigible storyteller. He would tell the same stories in different ways. I wouldn’t know which ones to believe. So I believed all of them. “There is no story that is not true,” said Uchendu.

Father would point at the TV. He would repeat lines, rehearse the beginnings and ends, explicate with his hands the elaborate twists and turns of every road.

He said: “I am dying.”

I said: “But aren’t all of us dying.”

18.

And I thought the world
was about this leaving,
not about anybody’s leaving
but about this leaving.
The next day it was the same.

19.

A beautiful woman walks into a room. The room is dark. There are no windows. There is one light bulb but any time now it will go off. I pretend not to notice and look away, my heart beating against my chest like a club. If I strain hard enough I will hear a song in the background. What other forms of happiness are there than this?

20.

In 1989 the Berlin wall falls down.

21.

I believe in love only when it rains.

22.

To appreciate the value of land, one need only look into a painting: so much beauty. Buying land means buying the layers of beauty directly above it. It means buying the sky above it. And the birds above it, the clouds, the gods.

In truth you are buying a corner of the universe. You are saying: this is my room. You are saying: I live here. Here I exist.

23.

Your sadness is immaterial. You did
not come into the world to be happy.

~

You came to suffer/survive.

24.

How many words have you spoken in your life?
How many did you mean?
How many did you understand?

25.

Somebody picks up a phone. He dials a number. His voice travels a thousand miles into another country. On the other end somebody picks up and hears the voice. Who is this?– This is me. The phone is hung up. The voice travels back a thousand miles.

Elsewhere somebody picks up a phone and before he could dial forgets the number.

26.

Sometimes wars are waged because there are too many people in too few rooms.

27.

Memory is incomplete–lost.
The world is incomplete–vanishing.

Nothing more happens. You open your eyes and it’s over.

Memory is brutal.
Memory is precise.

28.

In the next room people I do not know are talking with hushed voices. Their secret slips out the window like a cat. It is raining, and I press my ear to the wall. I imagine that one of them is smoking a cigarette. I imagine that one of them is covering his mouth in surprise.

29.

When my aunt died the doctors said the fat clogged her arteries. Every week she visited the hospital, and every week the vein on her wrist had to be ripped out so a catheter could be stuck into her body to suck out her blood. You could see the plasma pass through a filter and then back to the body. If you put your ear to her wrist you would hear her heart.

Before my uncle died the heart attacks were so excruciating he said he’d prefer to just die. They transported him to the hospital, and on the way to the emergency room his heart gave. Mother said my uncle ate too much pork and drank too much beer. She wonders if he’s going to be happy in heaven.

30.

In some house in some province in some country in some novel there is a story of a man a father a child a lover who dies because of too much sadness.

31.

Nobody thought that what was wrong was the love.

32.

She said: give me more space.

A country without miracles
sits heavy on the map,
thinking of banana trees rotting
in the sunlight.
The man who watches over it
has commandeered all hopes,
placed them in a sack,
and tied its loose end.
He goes around carrying it
on his back.
When asked what is inside,
he says, “Just a handful of feathers,
just a handful of feathers.”
That’s how light the burden
of government is in peace time—
any tyrant can turn it into a metaphor.
You kneel on the parched earth
and pray for rice. Only the wind
hears your useless words.
The country without miracles
tries to get up from the page,
but the bold ink and sharp colors
hold it down.