The Unknown University (60 page)

Straight out of

World War II

Said Pancho lying down

In the back of the van.

He said: filaments

Of Nazi generals like

Reichenau or Model

Escaping in spirit

Involuntarily

To the Virgin Lands

Of Latin America:

A hinterland of specters

And ghosts.

Our home

Positioned within the geometry

Of impossible crimes.

And at night we would

Go out to the clubs:

The sweet-sixteen-year-old whores

Descendents of those brave men

Of the Pacific War

Loved hearing us talk

Like machine guns.

But above all

They loved seeing Pancho,

Wrapped in piles of colored blankets

With his wool cap

From the altiplano

Pulled down to his eyebrows,

Appear and disappear

Like the gentleman

He always was,

A lucky guy,

The great ailing lover from southern Chile,

The father of the Neochileans.

And the mother of Caraculo and Jetachancho,

Two poor musicians from Valparaíso,

As everyone knows.

And dawn would find us

At a table in the back

Discussing the kilo and a half of gray matter

In the adult

Brain.

Chemical messages, said

Pancho Misterio burning with fever,

Neurons activating themselves

And neurons inhibiting themselves

In the vast expanses of longing.

And the little whores said

A kilo and a half of gray

Matter

Was enough, was sufficient, why

Ask for more.

And Pancho started to

Weep when he heard them.

And then came the flood

And the rain brought silence

Over the streets of Mollendo,

And over the hills,

And over the streets in the barrio

Of the whores,

And the rain was the only

One talking.

A strange phenomenon: we Neochileans

Shut our mouths

And went our separate ways

Visiting the dumps of

Philosophy, the safes, the

American colors, the unmistakable manner

Of being Born and Reborn.

And one night our van

Made for Lima, with Pancho

Ferri at the wheel, like in

The old days,

Except now a whore

Was with him.

A thin young whore,

Whose name was Margarita,

An unrivaled teen,

Resident of the permanent

Storm.

Thin and agile shadow

The dark ramada

Where Pancho

Might heal his wounds.

And in Lima we read

Peruvian poets:

Vallejo, Martín Adán and Jorge Pimentel.

And Pancho Misterio went out

On stage and was convincing

And versatile.

And later, still trembling

And sweaty,

He told us of a novel

Called
Kundalini

By an old Chilean writer.

One swallowed by oblivion.

A
nec spes nec metus

We Neochileans said.

And Margarita.

And the ghost,

The mournful hole

Where all endeavors

End,

Wrote — it seems —

A novel called
Kundalini
,

And Pancho could hardly remember it.

He really tried, his words

Poking around in a dreadful infancy

Full of amnesia, gymnastic

Trials and lies,

And he was telling it to us like that,

Fragmented,

The Kundalini scream,

The name of a race-loving mare

And the shared death on the racetrack.

A racetrack that no longer exists.

A hole anchored

In a nonexistent Chile

That’s happy.

And the story had

The virtue to illuminate

Like an English landscape painter

Our fear and our dreams

Which were marching East to West

And West to East,

While we, the real

Neochileans

Traveled from South

To North.

And so slowly

It seemed we weren’t moving.

And Lima was an instant

Of happiness.

Brief but effective.

And what is the relationship, asked Pancho,

Between Morpheus, god

Of Sleep

And
morfar
, slang

To eat?

Yes, that’s what he said,

Hugged around the waist

By the lovely Margarita,

Skinny and almost naked

In a bar in Lince, one night

Glimpsed and fractured and

Possessed

By the lightning bolts

Of the chimera.

Our necessity.

Our open mouth

Where bread

Goes in

And dreams

Come out: vapor trails

Fossils

Colored with the palette

Of the apocalypse.

Survivors, said Pancho

Ferri.

Lucky Latin Americans.

That’s it.

And one night before leaving

We saw Pancho

And Margarita

Standing in the middle of an infinite

Quagmire

And then we realized

The Neochileans

Would be forever

Governed

By chance.

The coin

Leapt like a metallic

Insect

From between his fingers:

Heads, to the south,

Tails, to the north,

And we all piled into

The van

And the city

Of legends

And fear

Stayed behind.

One happy day in January

We crossed

Like children of the Cold,

Of the Unstable Cold

Or of the Ecce Homo,

The border of Ecuador.

At the time Pancho was

28 or 29 years old

And soon he would die.

And Margarita was 17.

And none of the Neochileans

Was over 22.

MEJOR APRENDER A LEER QUE
APRENDER A
MORIR

Mucho mejor

Y más importante

La alfabetización

Que el arduo aprendizaje

De la Muerte

Aquélla te acompañará toda la vida

E incluso te proporcionará

Alegrías

Y una o dos desgracias ciertas

Aprender a morir

En cambio

Aprender a mirar cara a cara

A la Pelona

Sólo te servirá durante un rato

El breve instante

De verdad y asco

Y después nunca más

Epílogo y Moraleja
:
Morir es más importante que leer, pero dura mucho menos.
Podríase objetar que vivir
es morir cada día.
O que leer es aprender a morir, oblicuamente.
Para finalizar, y
como en tantas cosas, el ejemplo sigue siendo Stevenson.
Leer es aprender a morir,
pero también es aprender a ser feliz, a ser valiente.

IT’S BETTER TO LEARN HOW TO READ THAN TO LEARN
HOW TO DIE

Literacy is

Much better

And more important

Than the arduous study

Of Death

It will be with you all your life

And will even dole out

Happiness

And a certain misfortune or two

Learning to die

On the other hand

Learning to look

The Grim Reaper in the face

Will only serve you a short while

The brief moment

Of truth and disgust

And then never again

Epilogue and Moral
:
Dying is more important than reading, but it doesn’t last as long.
You could argue
that living is dying every day.
Or that reading is learning to die, obliquely.
In
conclusion, and as with so many things, the example continues to be Stevenson.
Reading is learning to die, but also learning to be happy, to be brave.

RESURRECCIÓN

La poesía entra en el sueño

como un buzo en un lago.

La poesía, más valiente que nadie,

entra y cae

a plomo

en un lago infinito como Loch Ness

o turbio e infausto como el lago Balatón.

Contempladla desde el fondo:

un buzo

inocente

envuelto en las plumas

de la voluntad.

La poesía entra en el sueño

como un buzo muerto

en el ojo de Dios.

RESURRECTION

Poetry slips into dreams

like a diver in a lake.

Poetry, braver than anyone,

slips in and sinks

like lead

through a lake infinite as Loch Ness

or tragic and turbid as Lake Balatón.

Consider it from below:

a diver

innocent

covered in feathers

of will.

Poetry slips into dreams

like a diver who’s dead

in the eyes of God.

UN FINAL FELIZ

Finalmente el poeta como
niño y el niño del poeta

A HAPPY ENDING

Finally the poet as child and
the child of the poet.

Un final feliz

En México

Una habitación blanca

El atardecer

Rojo

Y las figuras

Posadas vueltos a encarnar

Animando la velada

Nosotros

Los de antes

Sin fotografías

De las aventuras

Pasadas

Sin recuerdos

Humildes y dichosos

En México

En el atardecer

Sin mácula

De México

A happy ending

In Mexico

A white bedroom

The red

Sunset

And the figures

Of Las Posadas incarnated again

Livening up the evening

We

The ones from before

Lacking photographs

Of past

Adventures

Lacking memories

Modest and fortunate

In Mexico

In the unblemished

Mexican

Sunset