WOUND OF YOUR WOUND Poem by Carlos López Degregori

(december 14)

I've birthed a goddess or a god. It came from my eyes or my mouth, I'm not sure which, but there it was when I awoke, like an enormous vivid wound of love or like a flame.

It started to extend its hands, to test its pulse in a strange music, to try its brand-new words and steps. In one instant it stared at me and was a god, and in the next it faded in a smile of smoke and was a goddess.



***


(december 15)

and now i'll have to choose:


(will i let you grow?
will i take you to graze
like a lamb on the highest mountains?
will i forsake you in a basket
or in a forest with the wolves and ravens?
will i push you from the precipice?
will i cast your lips in a strange language?
will i sew your love to my feet
like a shadow?
and what will i name you
so that i will know you
when many years have passed
and you return
like a lack
or a destiny fulfilled
to find me?



***


(march 15)

A lamb returned with flames instead of fleece and came to lick my legs, to graze from my hands and eyes.

It bleated grimly and I answered. It laughed with its charred teeth. It curled beside me like a sack of love.



***





(april 3)

In April I bought pencils and a notebook in order to teach it the alphabet. A god or goddess needs to know the mystery of letters and write its miracles and parables for posterity.

We traced the A a hundred times, muffling the voice.
The furious, electric E, fallen in ecstasy, its arms
outstretched against the ground.
The I is fierce.
The O inhaling in an oxygen chamber
or a steel lung.
The hard unsleeping U.

And we repeated them with perfect pitch and cadence, suspecting that for every letter there was another hidden like a shadow or a spine, and that with only these would we be free to speak our names.




***

(june 2)

One day you're here. Another day you're gone.

One night I sleep beside you in my bedroom and awake on a cobbled street, teeming with cats, in Prague. But I have never been to Prague. But I have never seen you sleep or walk along the threads of dreams.

One day you believe or you disbelieve. One day you fear me or I fear you, a single fear in unison. One day you know. Another day you don't.

You are a lamb in the morning. A dove in the afternoon. At night, a blind asbestos animal that likes to go unseen, digs corridors in the walls. I listen hard to hear you and I don't hear you. Or I do. I hear you like a tooth: or like a star: like a well: like a heartbeat.



***


(june 19)

You yawn and a moon slips out of your mouth.

You walk and roses sprout from your steps.

You sit at the table and ask for hosts to eat. I knot a napkin at your neck and serve them on a pure white plate with fork and knife.



***





(june 20, nighttime)

Each day you look more like a flaming tongue. I see you leap from one place to the next, search for yourself in mirrors or in the blessed image of the wall. I listen to you speak to yourself with sweet and inadmissible words.

I strike a match and you walk, following it, as if it were a lighthouse. I'm going to be your Love, you tell it or you tell me. I'm going to be your Virtue.

I strike another match. I take damp cloths and close the windows, the blade of the door, open the gas. I lie down in a corner; you keep walking. You take my pen and write this poem.



***



(june 21)

The next morning it wasn't there. Perhaps it fell ill from the light and fled, or lost its body and its air, little by little, until it disappeared.

I WILL BE A WOUND OF YOUR WOUND

it had written on the wall.