(“Demasiados Nombres” translation Heidi Fischbach)
Monday tangles up with Tuesday
and a week with the whole year.
Time cannot be cut
with your tired scissors,
and all the names of the day
are washed away by the night.
No one can be called Pedro,
nor Rosa, nor María.
All of us are dust or sand,
all of us are rain within rain.
I’ve been told of Venezuelas,
of Paraguays and of Chiles,
and I don’t know of what they speak:
I know the skin of the earth
and it has no last name.
When I lived among roots
they pleased me more than flowers,
and when I spoke to a stone
it rang out like a bell.
Springtime is so long
when it lasts all winter:
time has lost his shoes,
a year contains four centuries.
Every night when I sleep,
what am I called or not called?
And when I awake, who am I
if I was not myself while I slept?
What this means is that just
as we’re stepping foot in life,
just as we are newly being born,
let us not fill our mouths
with so many insecure names,
with so many sad labels,
with so many pompous letters,
with so much yours and so much mine,
with so much signing of papers.
I intend to confuse things,
to join them and newly birth them,
mix them up, undress them,
until the light of the world
has the oneness of the ocean,
a generous vast wholeness,
a fragrance that crackles.