Today Is not Just Any Saturday

What a gift you have, my friend,
for crying in your beer,
for gray complaints,
long ones,
like the snakes that used to crawl through our cities.
There's no loneliness, pal
like that of trying everybody up
for good cause or for bad
wishing many dead, so there'd just be a few of us left
and the beans would go around.
I could never understand it,
you and your favorite themes,
always the same,
people with no scruples,
cold rooms,
the city, the wine, the taverns,
people who piss in the street,
predictable music,
modern painting
doctors always doctors,
insomnia,
money talks,
bourgeois complacency.
And some shit or other is eating on you in this lament
that interests me, maybe, because it tells me where you're at.
I force myself to remember you the way you are:
your tale of woe is nothing new.
It's high time you used words to shock reality
stop milking it
anyone can tell
anyone can smell
where you're coming from,
sitting over there
in your chair of executive vinyl,
second-class reputation,
paying to get published,
(I don't blame you, it's your profession, you're entitled).
But why keep rehashing the same old story.
you're sick of the city, we know that by heart,
it's not cosmopolitan,
bland old Madrid, medieval
with its doormen and serenos
your nose full of smoke, sadness at your elbow,
the guitars, the tango,
air of a romantic with a consumptive cough . . .
I always knew you liked to suffer,
all that baloney about your pathetic childhood
as we walked through the Parque del Oeste,
"I was a shepherd boy, a street vendor,"
and meanwhile the sun was going down red, red!
glowing like the Painted Desert, like an Eclipse,
"I must get back to my music,"
paying for your poison in an elegant café,
you would go on moaning . . .
but I was no longer listening,
You should come here and see the girls
they don't even have tits and they're already in the streets
hunger deforms them and vice is a way to get food
boys who don't even shave offer their services
for a reasonable price,
epidemics don't kill us here, they are our habitat.
You should come here and see the shit in the gutters
yes, shit,
and stupid-ass police all over the place
pistol shots mid-morning and midnight,
food drifting farther and farther out of reach . . .
You should come here with your accent,
slurring your words so stylishly,
with your Don Quixote heritage,
fine Machegan wines,
your nylon tricot polo shirts
and your exquisite urban angst
in triumphant shades of gray,
you should come here so this jungle can eat you alive.
Here, not even ten cartons of Celtas
will do you any good,
there's no time to wait for death,
flies cut off your breath
or that multitude of eyes turning back in their sockets
your heart stops
at the inescapable horror of these syphilitic countries that do not learn your language
and never will.
Average life span
less than thirty years,
absolute misery,
violent prospects,
love a snort,
or a loud yell that suffices us.
No time to think of Kafka
or to be influenced by Bergman,
we are nothing more
than the violent joy of life and of death.

Translated by JoAnne Engelbert

Jeannette Miller is a poet, artist, and art critic. Among her many publications are La pintura de Noemí Ruíz y la poesía visual del trópico (1996), El paisaje dominicano: pintura y poesía (1992), Fórmulas para combatir el miedo: 1962-70 (1972), Estadías: poemas (1985), and Fichas de identidad: poemas (1985).

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