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They Ask Me for Verses
: Jose Rizal
They ask me for verses
I say everything has been silent
and broken for so long
And now I have nothing more to say
Only this:
she loved me once
but now she turns away
stammering,
delirious,
as if to vex my mind
or mock
her own lamentation
It has come to this
my soul has grown tired
of itself
True, there was a time
when we knew
the indulgence of friends
but of that time
I remember so little now
memory plays its tricks
like the aftermath of a fiesta
when the ear still recalls
the tumult of orchestras
I must be a plant
pulled by the roots
out of the east
with its perfumed spaces
and boundaries
of dreams
Call it what you will
I call it home
I have learned to sing
only about it,
and its waters
forever whispering
and its limitless shore
Call it what you will
I found happiness there
and as a child
I realized that my heart
resonated to the tremor
of volcanoes
and when I became a poet
my words made the breeze
forget its memory
of firmament or zones
All that was long ago
And when I left
and when I became dry
and when I became nude
I lost
not the past
but the sound of the past
The sea opened itself
to me and it had
only one thing to say:
Death
Specter
Madness
My beautiful illusion
all my loves
all my vehement desire
everything I've left behind
and all that I know
of bloom or sky
The heart is bereft
of all its love
so ask for no verses
there is nothing there
because in the desert
of the soul
where I ramble with no rest
I know
these old familiars,
agony,
agony,
and the sleepless gods.
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