You’ve had a vision — you’ve had a vision of yourself — seated facing something you have not lovingly looked upon because you wanted to place a hand upon yourself and your body did not — between surging winds you have and wouldn’t have envisioned — you have felt and remembered yourself from your dreams, but you didn’t want to understand, and so your touch didn’t yearn for nothingness, and your refusal to feel around for yourself preserved the belief that you still had not.
*
Everything is put into motion at the very touch since the beginning of time. The very touch is the greatest of miracles because the very touch sends two marbles rolling such that they are one and in turn confirms the two have seized up into one.
[stanza] [lineate indent=3] What sadness does the very touch deliver you from?[/lineate]
[stanza] [lineate indent=3] Nobody says your enjoyment of the very touch is bettered without sadness.[/lineate]
[stanza] [lineate indent=3] Rather, you will be greedy[/lineate]
[stanza] [lineate indent=3] the very touch at the service of what you have had and done.[/lineate]
[stanza] [lineate indent=3] With nary a movement from oblivion, it gives you the measure of oblivion.[/lineate]
[stanza] [lineate indent=3] The very touch at the service of the elemental[/lineate]
[stanza] [lineate indent=3] so that nothing troubles its use and benefit[/lineate]
[stanza] [lineate]and in the end you might have something more concrete than worldly attention and life [/lineate]
the foregoing and the inevitable are magic, and it all turns to vapor at the very touch
~ Jaime Saenz, trans. from Spanish by Ted Dodson
Jaime Saenz wrote ‘la noche’ and ‘los papeles de narciso lima-achá’. He is said to have stolen a corpse’s limb from the morgue, and to have brought a panther home to his wife on their wedding day.
Ted Dodson is circulation director of BOMB magazine and author of ‘pop! in spring’.