On This Night, In This World (Alejandra Pizarnik)
on this night in this world
words of the dream of childhood of death
it’s never what you wish to say
the mother-tongue castrates
the tongue is an organ of knowledge
about the failure of every poem
castrated by its own tongue
which is the organ of re-creation
of re-cognition
but not of resurrection
of the thing as negation,
of my horizon as maldoror with his hound
and there are no promises
in all that is speakable
this is the same as lying
(everything that can be said is a lie)
the rest is silence
only silence doesn’t exist
no
words
do not make love
they make absence
if i said water would i drink?
if i said bread would i eat?
on this night in this world
the extraordinary silence of this night
the thing about the soul is it doesn’t see itself
the thing about the mind is it doesn’t see itself
the thing about the spirit is it doesn’t see itself
where does this conspiracy of invisibilities come from?
not one word is visible
shadows
viscous enclosures concealing
the stone of madness
black passageways
i’ve passed through them all
oh, why not stay with us a little longer!
my person is wounded
my first-person singular
i write as one who raises a knife in the darkness
i write as i speak
absolute sincerity would continue
being the impossible
oh, why not stay with us a little longer!
the breakdown of words
abandoning the palace of language
the knowledge between the legs
what did you do with the gift of sex?
oh, all my dead —
i ate them i choked
I’ve had enough of enough
muffled words
everything slips away
to a black liquefaction
and the hound of maldoror
on this night in this world
where anything is possible
except for
a poem
i speak
knowing it isn’t about that
it’s never about that,
oh, help me write the most dispensable poem
that can’t even be used
to be useless
help me write words
on this night in this world
