The reader who delves into this anthology will discover a poet who is intense, mystical, concerned with human misery, but also with what makes us unique and special. The origin of his texts lies in nothingness, the first thing that was, and in not thinking, which followed that nothing. And the remedy is simple: poetry.
At Zenda we reproduce five poems from Habitaciones de existir. Poesía reunida (1999-2024), by Miguel Sánchez Robles.
***
CHAMBER OF THE ETHER
One day you wake up
without your place in the ether,
without the thirst to kiss us
in the midst of things,
and you say:
«Behold my magnificent
shitty clock.
Behold the rapid
unmaking of my life».
From your imperfect life,
so imperfect
as an African American mother
sitting in a very narrow kitchen
touching her hair
and pregnant with her fifth child,
or placing very new roses in vases
with tears in her eyes,
or like those other British mothers
who have faces of Mildred
or are nicknamed the Goat…
And then you ask yourself:
«From what terrible dream have I woken?»
And then you realize
that you do not care about ships without a course,
that you do not care about the muscles of the arm,
nor the halogen headlights of Mercedes cars,
nor children drunk in the middle of a party,
nor what followed Visconti’s cinema.
You do not care
nor the beauty of the mosques of Burkina Faso,
and now you are there
without your place in the ether,
smoking pale tobacco out of compassion
in one of those European capitals where nausea exists,
and you wander through hotels and bars empty of words
with eyes blocked by absence
and deaf,
as if you lived
in the hold of a very sunken ship
and only the fish’s eyes mattered to you,
the fish’s bastard eyes
that will end up eating you,
seated beneath the water
like a dead queen
that still occupies her throne,
that still occupies her throne.
***
BAGHDAD
Someone has died in you
and you have died in someone too.
The ragged cloth snake writhes wildly
that has swallowed the heart whole.
Today and always it is yesterday
and today and always it is never.
We speak with words that know death
as fish inherit suffocation and pain.
All to say that we once lived.
I ask you, Death,
in which Baghdad will you wait for me?
***
AMPHORAE
We would have liked not to know,
we would have liked a Friday joy without sadness,
to live like amphorae, tranquil.
We would have liked, not the nervous dogs,
nor the imperfect future of verbs,
nor the guilt of loving cocaine.
We would have liked,
like Woody Allen,
to reincarnate in the pads
of Warren Beatty’s fingers
or to fly without a helmet over the immense curvature of the Earth.
We would have liked to look at all things
with the eyes of those who can no longer see them,
to live in another way,
not to see infinity.
We would have liked not to die.
We would have liked that precious dream
that has slowly sunk
in the soft clocks that no one ever painted.
***
HIROSHIMA
Life is a handful of ash that still burns,
something that dissolves like a lump of salt
or a butterfly that scorches its eyes.
Also the heart is Hiroshima.
And that is why we cry in secret.
With almost no reason,
we suddenly cover our faces with our hands
and we cry then
like a nervous child who did not know how to live.
My mother used to do that
and neither she nor I knew why.
Then I understood:
Growing up is very sad
because you can die on any afternoon,
vomiting forever the dirty skin of the world.
How well car wheels break a puddle!
There are no travelers who ever arrive
to Ithaca.
***
WE ARE FILLED WITH A POOR BLIND FEVER
We are filled with a poor blind fever.
The days go by
and beauty withers alone.
Only a soft gas exists
and the precious blood
of a last living hummingbird,
the light freezing
and inhabiting other eyes,
seeking ahead a new dream,
like a miserable child
who lost happiness on Sundays.
In days like these
I recall the centuries that took breath away,
centuries that exist only
when the night is always.
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Author: Miguel Sánchez Robles. Title: Habitaciones de existir. Poesía reunida (1999-2024). Publisher: Villa de Indianos. Sale: Todos tus libros.
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