RODRIGO TRUJILLO: A WATER JUG OF LARKS

Photograph Salih Pexels.com

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A Water Jog of Larks

You wore zopilotes in your hair
and you didn’t know
you went down to the river to submerge
the light blue as you moved
the river washed you of time
the river carried your time away
When are you from?
How much of you has gone?
in the depths of dream you gather flowers
A gift of an orange
you smile, holding out your hand
in the depths of dreams
lightning shoots across your forehead
lightning criss crosses your flowers
spreading out into the current
you leave a thick spill of zopilotes

The wind ran and the afternoon came
light fell and you weren’t there
only sunset flaring from under the door
death bellowed
wanting to mimic your voice calling my name
its bellows came with the crackling of a torch
death walked shaking out its banner
death walking, behind itself
multiplied drumming steps
ash death
white and moon-like
crossed the night on foot
leaving trails of burnt flesh
a breeze that smelled of gasoline

In a gash
in a hole that oozes
perhaps a dismembered place
you go out to fill your basket with hands
the rainy season washes the ground
makes them sprout when the river rises
the first of the day   2   3       4
the earth is full of smiles
399      400
the earth full of dental pieces and molars
white deposits like salt outcrops
like an afternoon after the hailstorm
hundreds of phalanges fill the bags
hundreds of bags fill the belly of the earth
that is the fall    what happens
what we do    what we don’t do
we stop doing
in a gash
a hole that oozes
in a dismembered place

Made up with the silt of memory
you cross time and its banks
where the catfish have built sand tombs
for us
where did the reflections of light and water gather
so thickly
until they buried you?
the book of zopilotes    I try to decipher it
but its ink rots too quickly
I want to take you to be buried but I don’t know where they left you
beneath the earth of the world a jar full of larks is sounding
under the sun I walk searching
stringing necklaces of teeth around my neck
what do I do now
the foliage of silence is blooming tirelessly

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XXII

The house is on fire    dear Marina
the house in the rain
you and I as children watch it
the timbers crackle like snow
we watch without being able to clasp hands

Kiss the forehead — heal the anguish
I kiss your forehead

Kiss the eyes — put out the horror
I kiss your eyes

Kiss the lips — wash away the silence
I kiss your lips

Kiss the temple — close the hollow
I kiss your temple

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XXXV

HABITAT

Of dust and wounds
let us speak
of the small man who gathers small things
in the lagoon
and taps stones to sharpen them
and cuts time
also of the stars in the sky
and the bowl of soup
let us speak of the grass growing under the gas tanks
or of the poet in luminous coveralls
with his theater of taxidermied doves that blossom

In pages of silt
let us also read words like fossils
the prints of feet and hands moving in swift desperation
under the tracks of tires and boots
let us look into the air no matter the season
at the rain of flowers
their hands tied behind their backs
in their reverse flights of death
of a perpetual autumn
those drowsy angels raining down at night
all of it furrowed by a dark threnody of orcas
or hidden in the muddy beds of rivers
of a long night of long sticks
for there is an angle of light where petals of the thaw
always fall
where the sun is always setting
with its face torn off to its raw flesh
because not everything is glory
nor majesty

We inhabit places
not time
the place for eating and the bed
the corner for defecating and the gaze of whoever is with us
the panel for painting being and a chamber of bones laid out
fear and awe
with their perimeter of thickets lying in wait
all places repeat
at another point
in another era
in another way
in another fire
but we keep on gathering things
refining things that slice time
dust and wounds are also spaces
the exacting space of memory

I have a bone folder
white bone
I don’t use it because I don’t bind books
I don’t fold
anything at all
I picked it, one out of many, from a mass grave
a smooth splinter
the most graceful the most beautiful
the warmest in the hands of defeat
what do I want it for?
it is a blue stone raised against forgetting
the center around which on the alluvial plain blood swirls
it is a herd of stars that moves across
the burnt fields of History

The air that sustains life
also kills
it is the caterpillar eating foliage away, oxidation
the lust that germinates wheat of Cuzco
schools of flying fish that shuttle
through the liquid walls of Constantinople
and rust our machinery of drifting into nothingness
the perpetual reinvention of things unleashes memory
and its Alzheimer’s
that gives the clandestine grave its strange virtue
of holding hopes
gives excavated oblivion the voice
of folding instants out onto distant days
of making the cave into a house
the rock into a temple
turning the house into a bowl
bones
dust
from which to raise walls and columns that rise
like the smoke
an offering laid out on the blank space.

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Rodrigo Trujillo (Mexico City, 1977). A writer and teacher, he currently works for the Government of Mexico City. He holds a PhD in Literature from the National Autonomous University of Mexico. His creative work has appeared in independent magazines. He is the author of Las horas cardinales (The Cardinal Hours, 2019), and Mei-Mei y Tornaviaje (relatos para un encuentro), forthcoming. One of his books was a finalist for the XXXIV Loewe Foundation International Poetry Prize.