Two Poems

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Where the smokes
of the sad cooking pots cross paths with those
of the burning clothes
and the grey horizon disarrays its mist
there I wait

Where the smokes
of the packed street cross paths
and the smell of oil burns the palate
with the tongue that tangles up the vowels
put to sleep by the accumulated liquor
put to sleep by the ferment of History
I wait
and we don’t understand what unites us
and we don’t understand wanting to lose everything and forget

Where the smokes
of the sad cooking pots
the molten cooking pots
cross paths between the fire and the sun
where the corn and coffee are ground
beside the scraps
and all is spurned in the commerce
of the blackened street
I wait

Where the smokes
of nicotine and carbon dioxide
tar and benzene cross paths
in fine particles
gasoline    lubricants
polycyclic hydrocarbons
and also cross
the turbid thought of repeated time
I wait

Where the smokes
of the packed street cross paths
and the women braid their sweaty colors
in the center of noise
with the soot chipped over their bodies
and the turbine muddied
in line for the bus
there I wait
for the taste of a seed

the silence
where a god inhabits us

***

I need
these bustling people on the streets
and my heart burns gas (the
common kind)
like any other urban motor

Ferreira Gullar

With your hands
to work on the accents
to pursue an instant in the gauging
of a dirt path shaking
under the musty wall of asphalt

Long rolled stone

A heart to beat
in a breath of metals

Over my chest, the sunken pavement
and a mineral hardens on the outskirts
I don’t reach it
I can hardly hold the drill

With your hands to work on the accents
long rolled stone
I sing

(poems from the unpublished book Kerosén [Kerosene], 2017)

Translated by Arthur Dixon