Longing
Octavio López
Will I restrain myself when it appears?
Are passions mazed enough to chain the waves
of torrid light when shadow misbehaves,
when memory, when touch unveils and sears?
If yearning blooms as roses (thorns as spears),
as song transmuting stillness into waves,
rogue air debris that turns late nights to caves,
pristine to abstruse, wry polygons to spheres,
which path will I comply with, eager void,
to endure the ambiguous yoke this crossroad grants?
The solitude (quiet monolith, broad peace)
or swayed implosion, grim and overjoyed,
of sheer acquiescence that sanity recants,
thorough surrender, fatal
interstice
that emulates liberation,
self-imposed mirage
where existence is an eroding drought
and I am prone to quench
an ingrained longing
at a fleeing spring,
vanishing source
manifesting itself as a
time rupt
ure,
as a formal invitation to
defenestrate
myself through
a fissure on the monad,
a grace note,
a cleft,
a vertex on the surface of
the black pearl
that reality has become
and
that flourishing stream,
that unsuspected portal,
threshold of a waning wasteland,
is the vague resemblance
of a laughter
floating over the sound of the motors,
the dark axis of tires,
entering the house with a movement of drapes,
it is a fragrance that I recall,
incarnated
when it passes,
crosses the street,
turns a corner and
disappears and
sprouts unexpectedly anywhere else,
formulating itself like a ghost,
when it lays over a balcony
like a noon bird would do
when the city agonizes in dun
death rattles,
but
not amber in mid-sky,
no pause of flight
at twilight,
no bouquet,
garden,
changing of the seasons,
no spices,
no fireworks,
no dim lights in cafes,
no theaters or abandoned theaters,
no comet traces,
craters,
sandfalls,
not one miracle exists
if it is not an emanation
from desire, from
its fractal essence
pulsating
anywhere there is dew
(for it is like a morning confirmation of life),
everywhere there is fog
(for it is like a blinding horizon)
all the places I have been to
and remember
(for it is like an omen of anything that will ever captivate me)
including this crucial moment
when the cliff approaches
and I have to decide
whether to defy domination
like an untamed beast
or to give in to
the dark axioms of nature
like an untamed beast.
Roads are closed and
I can’t just walk past every ossified storefront
chasing down unnerving symbols
invisible to everybody else
and
turmoil
and
confinement
ascend as a riddle:
is a death
threat as
profuse as
temptation?
Octavio López
Will I restrain myself when it appears?
Are passions mazed enough to chain the waves
of torrid light when shadow misbehaves,
when memory, when touch unveils and sears?
If yearning blooms as roses (thorns as spears),
as song transmuting stillness into waves,
rogue air debris that turns late nights to caves,
pristine to abstruse, wry polygons to spheres,
which path will I comply with, eager void,
to endure the ambiguous yoke this crossroad grants?
The solitude (quiet monolith, broad peace)
or swayed implosion, grim and overjoyed,
of sheer acquiescence that sanity recants,
thorough surrender, fatal
interstice
that emulates liberation,
self-imposed mirage
where existence is an eroding drought
and I am prone to quench
an ingrained longing
at a fleeing spring,
vanishing source
manifesting itself as a
time rupt
ure,
as a formal invitation to
defenestrate
myself through
a fissure on the monad,
a grace note,
a cleft,
a vertex on the surface of
the black pearl
that reality has become
and
that flourishing stream,
that unsuspected portal,
threshold of a waning wasteland,
is the vague resemblance
of a laughter
floating over the sound of the motors,
the dark axis of tires,
entering the house with a movement of drapes,
it is a fragrance that I recall,
incarnated
when it passes,
crosses the street,
turns a corner and
disappears and
sprouts unexpectedly anywhere else,
formulating itself like a ghost,
when it lays over a balcony
like a noon bird would do
when the city agonizes in dun
death rattles,
but
not amber in mid-sky,
no pause of flight
at twilight,
no bouquet,
garden,
changing of the seasons,
no spices,
no fireworks,
no dim lights in cafes,
no theaters or abandoned theaters,
no comet traces,
craters,
sandfalls,
not one miracle exists
if it is not an emanation
from desire, from
its fractal essence
pulsating
anywhere there is dew
(for it is like a morning confirmation of life),
everywhere there is fog
(for it is like a blinding horizon)
all the places I have been to
and remember
(for it is like an omen of anything that will ever captivate me)
including this crucial moment
when the cliff approaches
and I have to decide
whether to defy domination
like an untamed beast
or to give in to
the dark axioms of nature
like an untamed beast.
Roads are closed and
I can’t just walk past every ossified storefront
chasing down unnerving symbols
invisible to everybody else
and
turmoil
and
confinement
ascend as a riddle:
is a death
threat as
profuse as
temptation?