Zenda shares five of the poems that make up this collection.
***
Threading the Needle
From the backstage
of a long-gone shop,
the one who sews resists
the abandonment of his ghosts.
He has not yet begun the stitching
of a quilt full of patches,
scarce in softness
for renouncing oblivion.
Defending his tangle
of the past, which now runs
along a copper needle.
Now, thread from the very first thread
an entire journey through his experiences.
***
1. A Day
One day (for real)
I will leave my head
in a drawer, for example.
From its solitude
now freed from the body
this head will try to converse
with the “things” from that collection.
In the small enclosed room, now with no air inside,
it curses the moment it was thrown there
foreign to contemplations, with no respect.
It is hard to breathe
it does not know whether it is due to a lack of oxygen
or to the anxiety that the rest of the objects
seem immune to its charms.
“Cursed be my owner!
Where are you when I need you most?
Something so crucial and thus forgotten…”
I wander the world like a headless chicken.
***
10. Scissors
Cutting the umbilical cord
killing the father or breaking the ties,
depending on how symbolic we are.
All roads lead
to the physical separation of child from parent.
Thus we move
thanks to strange yet firm scissors
with which we shed so many things,
until we are trimmed down to what we are:
purified beings, minimal in the essential,
even while bearing a collection of things
that do not weigh but that we carry
inside this ethereal burden.
Thus the swift tailor goes on, cutting here and there,
knowing from the experience of time
what will be left of all this.
A suit tailored for a new owner
with its own seams, scars and mends.
***
13. Remnants
With various remnants I want to craft
a temporal map. The needle will be the minute hand
and the thread will weave a broad space.
Space and time, place and moment,
different regions that, like full areas,
other eras and woven epics will be represented.
Taking out each scrap of my life that I have kept
in a metal box, to assemble a grand banner.
That is my lifelong project. That is what I bequeath
to whoever wants to use it as a superficial atlas, though sincere.
***
Handling the Threads
Like a spider, I wish I could
manage the threads of my defense,
neutralize any possible strategy
intended to attack, and have in my web
any kind of enemy.
Yet I am only another little insect
at the mercy of the spiders, their prey
and their favorite amusement.
They are the ones who begin weaving
the devouring target.
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Author: Javier Mateo Hidalgo. Title: Cajón de-sastre. Publisher: Búho Búcaro.