Erika Ghersi
Translated from Spanish by Toshiya Kamei
Promenade (1914) by August Macke
Another agent has arrived,
and his identity
is the passport hard to hide.
He drank the blood
still wet on the rosebushes
and wiped his face.
His weary eyes mirrored you,
tattooed on a white background.
Keep the windows overlooking the garden open
so that the leaves fly
and fall like when there’s nothing to say.
Remember that there was guilt
in the last body
and the cats ripped the oil painting apart.
The ants kept something from the dead bodies,
something that would be useful in winter. And you
came back to kiss my chest. But girl,
I feel nostalgic like an empty stomach,
and your ants get upset while I walk,
they wait for my body to fall
on the abandoned roads.
It’s easy for you to drag me to your woods,
hide me in the hard bones of your dead,
hurt me in the rosebushes.
But you pick me up.
You don’t want to leave me for the flies.
Blossoms in the Night (1918) by Paul Klee
You’re in the garden of the large painting,
you’re tall and on your skin
ants have settled.
You’re lying among lemon blossoms.
From your belly
the cloud you chose
turns and you don’t see its profile anymore,
but its body is still perfect,
an up-side-down sunflower in the night
that crosses the bridge of the black moon.
Turn back, girl.
Go and hurt the grass.
Don’t let the light meddle,
but the sky.
Climb up to the red castle, girl
and hurl yourself toward the bottom of the painting
to touch its imperceptible spaces
found in your awkward movement.
Once there, pick up the ants resting on the riverbanks
and take them to the garden.
There they’ll go around the puddles of the night.
Finally, run outside, but don’t look back, girl
because the blows that come from inside
could wear out your gait
on the path that
you won’t see again.