equally dead men
they bring wine glasses to their lips
that drink to the health of Latin grammar,
men who were alive until yesterday
men who until yesterday made love, rode bicycles,
they bet unlikely numbers on the pool,
today they are equally dead
lead to their lips-lips of cold mouths, mouths of green snow-
cigarettes they bought at the kiosk on the corner of the cemetery,
the poor woman who attends the public through a small window with bars, she crosses herself and trembles when she brushes the frozen hands of
the dead,
But they cross, cross the avenue again
a car honks at them and they don't flinch,
they have come back from life and have been in death,
they look for a job full time
are listed on social records for domestic help
They rummage through municipal garbage cans
sometimes they find a portion of rabas still warm
and they crawl in the haze of the boulevards
they hear - by sheer luck - recite a poem and laugh
because the poem talks about a woman or a man
who is burdened with loneliness and boredom
What can the living know who have not yet died.
what can they know - they say - of routine and nothing,
poets write words they can barely stammer!
equally dead men
men who until a little while ago sneezed
and they screamed at the dog
and they bitched in anguish at the cashier's door
or scratched the anus with the fingertip
or they looked at their teeth in a bathroom mirror,
However, they seek love from every strain
Yet they seek the warmth of a living body
They are looking for a church, a hotel, a sentry box, a mother, a lover,
an open gate anywhere, and they know that the birds
they are nothing but the stewards of the gods
that they go with the gossip of the days of the living
and that they go with the gossip of the nights of the dead
And what about the gossip of the best sellers?
And equally dead men spit and sing
they piss and laugh, dance and dust off their lapels.
tomorrow you have to go to the office early
tomorrow you have to go anywhere early,
under the bench in a plaza is a good place to die
They are so cold that they shiver like rabbits.
and in a house like any other someone puts the kettle for mate
someone who thinks they have existential problems
all because he has read something from Sartre or something from Kundera,
he didn't understand a damn thing about anything,
But he feels, ah, feels, existential.
and he writes a poem about how small his house is
and how fragile her body is
and light an incense candle next to a porcelain Buddha.