To a God Unknown
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Whoever you are
don't come.
The seeds are mixed with tigers teeth,
an endless fire pours down on the helmuts,
nobody knows when the grimacing will stop,
the erosion of a time in pieces.


Obeying you, we have fallen


-Julio Cortazar




The Happy Child
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That flesh of happiness
twist in the air and settles
lightly on your hair like a petal
along with the breeze's bees.


Out of this airy happiness flows
the beauty where you go dancing
oh girl blind to the stirring
wings of a black rose.


-Julio Cortazar




The Gods
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The gods go moving through trampled things, lifting
the hems of their robs with a look of disgust.
Through rotting cats, hatching larvae and accordions,
feeling the wetness of putrid rags, time's
vomit,
Under their sandals.


In their denuded sky they dwell no more, thrown out
besides themselves with pain, a troubled dream,
they walk along wounded by nightmares and slime,
stopping
to recount their dead, the clouds face-down,
the broken-tongued dogs,
to gaze enviously into the pit
where shrieking rats on their hind legs
fight over scraps of flags.


-Julio Cortazar




The Brief Love
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How smoothly and how sweetly
she lifts me from the bed where I was dreaming
of profound and fragrent fields,


She runs her fingers over my skin and sketches me
in space, suspended, until the kiss
alights curved and recurrent

a slow flame kindling
the rhythmic dance of the bonfire
weaving us together in flashes, in spirals,
going and coming in a storm of smoke-

(So why is
what's left of me, afterwards,
just a sinking into ashes
without a goodbye, with nothing more than a gesture
of letting our hands go free?)


-Julio Cortazar




The Hero
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With his eyes wide open,
his heart in his hands
and his pockets full of pigeons
he gazes deep into time.

He spies his own desire, lights on high,
garlands, green arrows, towers
from which the long hair is let down
and splendid battles are born.

He runs, his fervor drives him on,
it is his torch and his horse,
he seeks the way into the city,
hoist the flag of the future, cries out like the wind.

Everything is there, the open street
and the mirage in the distance,
the inexplicable closeness of what can't be reached
and he believes he can reach, and he runs.

There's no need to stumble nor to be stabbed,
the bodies fall of their own weight,
and at some point his eyes can make out
the truth of shadows.

Still he stands tall,
still the steel falcon flutters on his fist.
The cliffs resound with the shouted question
of the man alone at last as he arrives.

Then he's not so sure,
maybe the goal isn't really a begining;
and at the end of the street
that looked so beautiful
there's nothing more than a withered tree
and a broken fan.


-Julio Cortazar




Clearance Sale
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I feel myself dying in you, over taken by expanding
spaces, which feed on me just like hungry
butterflies.
I close my eyes and I'm laid out in your memory, barely
alive
with my mouth wide open and the river of oblivion rising.
And you, patiently, with needle-nosed pliers, pull out
my teeth, my eyelashes, you strip
the clover from my voice, the shade from my desire,
you open up windows of space in my name
and blue holes in my chest
through which the summers rush out in mourning.

Transparent, sharpened, interwoven with air
I float in a drowse, and still
I say your name and wake you, anguished.
But you force yourself to forget me,
and I'm a barely a bubble
reflecting you, which you'll burst
with the blink of an eye.


-Julio Cortazar




The Ceremony
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I took off your clothes amid trembling and tears
on a bed that was open to infinity,
and if I had no pity on your protests
nor on your begging nor your flushed face,

I was a potter at the dawn of time,
inside the clay I could feel being born
the slow ritual risk of the live flame,
the mythic return to flowers and to the source.

You wove in my arms the rustling locks
of time's hair linked like a chain
to it's eternally recurring fire;

I don't know what you say through your lament,
I saw eagles and moss, I had become
that side of the mirror where the serpent sings.


-Julio Cortazar




After Such Pleasures
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Tonight, seeking your mouth in another mouth.
almost believing it, because that's how blind this river is
that throws me into some woman and submerges me in her
eyes,
and it's sad to swim finally toward the shore of sleep
knowing pleasure is that lowlife slave
who accepts sounterfeit coins and circulaates them, smiling.

Forgotten purity, how could I hope to recover
that ache of Buenos Aires, that ceaseless hopeless
expectation.
Alone in my open house above the port
to begin being in love with you again,
to meet you again over the morning coffee
with nothing that can't be forgiven
having occured.
And without my having to remember this oblivion
that rises
to no purpose, to erase your squiggles from the blackboard
and leave me nothing more than a starless window.


-Julio Cortazar




Maybe the Most Beloved
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You gave me stormy weather
with just the shadows of your hand
across my face.
You gave m ethe cold, the distance,
the bitter midnight coffee
among empty tables.

It always started raining
in the middle of the movie,
and waiting amid the petals
of the flower I brought you: a spider.

I think you knew it was there
and enjoyed the awkward moment.
I always forgot the unbrella
when I went to pick you up,
and on the corner they were hawking war.

I was a tango lyric
to your indifferent time.


-Julio Cortazar




Profit and Loss
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I'm lying again, with grace,
I bow respectfully before the mirror
reflecting my collar and tie
I believe I am that gentleman who goes out
every morning at nine.
The gods are dead one by one in long lines
of paper and cardboard.
I don't miss anything, I don't even
miss you. I feel a little hollow, but it's just
a drum: skin on either side.
Sometimes you return in the evening, when I'm reading
things that put me to sleep: the news,
the dollar and the lound, United Nations
debates. It feels like
your hand stroking my hair. But I don't miss you!
It's just that little things are suddently missing
and I might like to seek them out: like happiness,
and the smile, that furtive little creature
no longer living between my lips.


-Julio Cortazar




If I'm to Live
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If I'm to live without you, let it be hard and bloody,
cold soup, broken shoes, or in the midst of
opulence
let the dry branch of a cough jerk through me, barking
your twisted name, the foaming vowels, and let the
bed sheets
stick to my fingers, and nothing give me peace.
I won't learn to love you and better this way,
but abandoned by happiness
I'll know how much you gave me just by sometimes being
around.
I think I understand this, but I'm holding myself
there'll need to be frost on the lintel
so the one taking shelter in the vestibule feels
the light in the dining room, the milky tableclothes, and the smell
of bread passing its brown hand through the crack.
As for apart from you
as one eye from the other
out of this affliction I've taken on
will be born the gaze that deserves you at last.


-Julio Cortazar