Ricardo Cázares, trans by Joe Imwalle

my shadow leads the way

at this hour

it has grown so long

it goes without its owner

my friend sees it far off

and starts to whistle

this hour, she tells me

is strange

we don’t know if walking a bit more

we’ll return

or if

the point of departure

starts to drift 

only in music can time

take up a real place

in space

we’ve been walking for a while

I ask her why she stops whistling                                                      

she tells me music confuses                                                   

you hear it and imagine a place has been reached

                                                                        Depuis un long si temps que nous allions en Ouest,¿que                                                                               savions-nous de choses périssables?

                                                                                                                                          Saint John Perse, Anabase

no one talks with you                                                           

about the bit of

       and the least of the night                                                 

         if night is left intact

it offers me its hand with dread

asks if I still know it looks at the needle

pointing asks if I know

what the west is

motionless hand

stills all solution

      metallic blood, magnet

of what’s meticulous

no one even talks                                           

about meters on the maps

there are of the sea                                                     

all latent                                 

and blue

their synapses                         

            not even when they know it’s day

and the curtain is drawn with fear                             

      with humility the measurement

      of substances

the problem is the air

            not the music itself, but

      now, the pure perforated air

that will outlive it

                  it’s best to just remember like a relic

the loose end, the roll on the pulley

            tearing the paper

upon the mark thinking

whoever made it must have made it

without thinking, the new note, that was

new as the air at the moment

of its summoning

            that, meticulously, air

at a millimeter and a half

from the hammer

            the problem

is not the faulty part nor the machine itself

                        like everything, the mechanism

has a fix, though it’s expensive

            but the air, the air...

            a matter of distance

                                calibrate

                  and perforate

            the gears are lubricated with patience

                        and grease

                        just align

            the rod to the shaft

                                    the pedal is pressed

            the fine-tuned motor sets the rhythm

            and it’s done

                              C'est ça!, ça va

but the music is lost

                        it comes and goes

            we can only borrow it

even if it’s late

even if to you it seems late and you know now

what it takes to begin

you will need to

even if you’re old and grey                                        

before your time

unable to tell a rough fold,

a crease in the paper

from a line dividing states

that of now, that of then

the old life you let drag out 

on the borders

even if there is no place

that’s yours on the map

you will have to hurry

and stake your claim

however you can

before the world and music

fall flat

and you must gauge yourself

with the words you have left

few remain

don’t flatter yourself  

that’s something 

you who runs the race

don’t know because you still

want to think nearly all

was learned in school

you, who when listening to a lecture

on sailors and travelers dozed

and shook your head

in the notebook recording here and there

quadrant measurements

a date, an inscription

etched in stone

that could be of use someday

someday

when cramming

for an exam

without knowing

the time or place

it’ll be given

I was one day watching a good rider, as we were galloping along

at a rapid pace, and thought to myself, “Surely if the horse starts,  

you appear so careless on your seat, you must fall.”            

Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle

and one of them, a man        

of thirty, thirty something

nearly forty, says the man

who rides the back

of a black horse that’s

violent, skittish, still yet untamed,

one of them, meaning

a man - not like me, nor

one I know - rides, he rides

to better read the line that’s read

when falling, when you lose

the balance 

that keeps the body

steady, upright, one of them

reminds me of a day in July

years ago, when I too

climbed onto, not a horse

but a hill to see

if from there the distance

could be measured, a distance

that in theory represents

where the currents bend

and the song warps

and you may hear sometime

the voice that was

that used to be all in the moment

when it was still believed, or you wanted

to believe the world

didn’t quite fit

on paper, and there was no need

to resign yourself to thinking

that a man

any man, or more so

if a woman, if she looks at you

and rides you to see

who falls first

if the bodies fit together

or break apart tumbling

down the slope of age

trampled by horses