Telma Costa 

Übersetzer:in

many-a-time I wrote for not going insane
most of the time I didn’t write
for not going insane

a novel, that would be the thing!...
they tell me looking sideways
to the poems
long
thin
thinking eels
clinging to the paper
of the rehab center

a novel, that would be the thing
with action time 
an entire house
from square root
to ceiling
corridors leading to
characters
tenuous
not totally 
dumb
(let´s bury realism
experimentalism
and god forbid 
postcolonialism)

a novel is what makes
heads turn on the street
it levels tables
duplicates showcases
expands criticism
ill with flu
in its stylish cocoon

now enters the convenient
descriptive pause
followed 
by referential
self-consciousness
as fado guitars play

a novel, that would be the thing!...
highbrow
between envy and paraphrase

                    I will read a text I will probably not read. I read and I don’t read. Hesitate. Read and stop. Stop and resume. Emphasize and punctuate. Stop and shake it. Hesitate.
                    Writing and talking is to hesitate constantly. To voice hesitation is to halt life to let thought pass. A river flowing on the same place but not flowing off it. A gurgling. A pool we splash in and look at our feet. A puddle where feet forget their body.
                    Hesitating made me arrive late to writing. Everyone highlights the late arrival.
                    Tardy, title of the forthcoming book. If I’m still on time, such was the announced threat. I struggle against time. Don’t we always? Who gives whom? Who has the right to point the finger? I will arrive late and at the right time, brittle cliché. For a long time, I used to go to bed late. I was immersed in sericulture. Arriving late into writing seems reproachable, arriving late to life bears no name. The unnamable. To equate writing and life is the hanged man’s noose. It’s not a metonymy. There are no figures of speech for being late. Only watches, calendars, and admonitions.
                    Tardy is tardy and even tardier.
                    I write books with a single word. Apocryphal books. Maggot-ridden books, holes in their skin, hesitations and leaps.
                    I haven’t started reading yet I’m already reading.
                    To hesitate – Latin word for the act of being perplexed.
                    No, in fact I am waiting for Samuel.

at the first hints of spring
I repeat the romantic, fateful journey
of george sand and chopin

their adventure started, it seems, 
the unromantic mass tourism
in the mediterranean

chopin gazes at me with a grave, already greenish face
half-bent over his coughing piano
not giving a damn about the splendor of the sun
and the dazzling gardens of the cartuxa 
in the island’s exuberant center 
in winter these harsh hills
must certainly be
like hell
however contemplative
the disciples of saint bruno might be

the natives didn’t like the couple
used to the tramontana’s whipping 
they saw their libertine ways
as a proof of
upcoming unlove

the woman had a manly name 
she smoked
and wrote throughout the night
while the man
whined and fingered the infinite piano 
their sons were not their sons
he looked like a woman
she looked like a man
none of this was easy to the poor people of majorca
forced into slavery and pig worshiping 

but what mostly troubled
majorcans
was the fiery yellow vest
of george-georgina

it was the year of magnolia, the film
it was that distant year when we became dazzled watching
julianne moore in and out of pharmacies buying morphine
and tom cruise shorter than ever spitting flames onstage
that distant year we got confused with those crossing stories
we heard that music loaded with metallic drugs
and out of nowhere a kitsch jewel of the seventies returns
supertramp arriving like aliens
in a corny-sentimental scene
as it suited them 

it was that year a distant nebula
in summer the worst heatwave in sixty years
(that’s what they always say)
thermometers kept in permanent blaze
I had lost weight to gain it to lose weight again
all this without giving much thought
all this mechanically
just to keep me floating on the surface of life

the loneliest character repeated with me 
«a million years ago I used to be intelligent»

oscar wilde inside reading sang 
it’s not going to stop
‘til you wise up 

people were working urinating working again
days rolled on gripping the shot arrow

magnolia grandiflora was a travesty of magnolia macrophyla 

now we only see mouths contorted 
and we wave at the roundworm of time 
painfully crawling
until the last take

so just give up

we keep on driving eating talking
we move forward in darkness
into the foliage
another man collapsed
crumbled cardboard
we halt for a while
we glance sideways
we follow on
hand on the wheel
mental tune
we move among greens
in the thick of the night

a strayed boy returns to Beirut 
coming from the massacres
he shakes his gaze
the city remains
the dust is the same
he dances and drinks within the war

we all are at war even without war 
as some go down
we hesitate and follow
we snug the shroud against the evening breeze 
we endure the front
we re-step the dance 
the path doesn´t wait
our time becomes less

in Beirut or Little Indian everybody will fall 
we’re already at war before we were born

a pause sometimes 
and then we proceed 
one more pill against fear
no doubt we will fall
we mash the vegetables
fingers float on the soup

settled for death we spell out war

we advance through the foliage
we advance into fear
we walk confidently
we macerate fragments
we write we love
tinted within
the warheads on the beach
the shard-streets
the head in the desert
the exposed hands

toda repetición es una ofensa 
y toda supresión es un olvido

how many times we die till we rest?