by Carlos Martínez Rivas

Hamlet

a monologue

                    I

    What a worry.
It’s Saturday.
I’ve nothing to drink.
It’s not a plan or a vow or a promise.
Far from it.

It’s force of circumstance.
Necessity.

I have to show up at the Ministry,
in good shape, with a normal pulse.
Fill out forms. Make an application.
Deal calmly with bureaucratic insolence.

                     II

    Flaubert to his friend Le Poittevin, in Croisset:
— “I wonder, what other people can be busy with
who aren’t busy with literature.
It intrigues me . . . ” —

And I wonder,
what do people who don’t drink do on Saturdays?

What will I do this Saturday with nothing to drink?

                     III

    I’ve got this letter.
Airmail / urgent.

But I’m hanging on to it.
It means a trip to the Post Office.

If I go and post it this early
what will I do after that?

Translated from Threnody for Joaquin Pasos & other poems
by Roger Hickin

by Carlos Martínez Rivas

— I want to paint a man with a lantern.
— Do it. But what will you put
around him to make him stand out?
— Night, of course — was the curt retort.

Translated from Threnody for Joaquin Pasos & other poems
by Roger Hickin

by Carlos Martínez Rivas

          BUT things should be as bad as they can get.

No jute mattress no water jug.
Hanging head down. Ankles
bound with rope,
a new one, tied to the roof beam,
creaking with the body’s weight.

Because things should be as bad as they can get.

Lacking not just the necessary but
the indispensable too. Material resources zero.
From wretchedness springs radiance. No worldly mite
should taint its clarity.

Bat–like, at ground level
you sense an emanation, black earth odour
mixed with dung, slaked lime. You sway
like the figure of the hanged man night winds
rock, maternally. But, you’re dangling upside down:
skull a plumb bob; temporal veins bulging, heroic,
bringing the beleaguered mind its flow of blood.
In the air your blind arm, outstretched
from its unsteady trunk, traces circles,
isosceles triangles, sketches of The Masterpiece.

It’s come to that already. And things are getting steadily worse.

Translated from Threnody for Joaquin Pasos & other poems
by Roger Hickin

by Carlos Martínez Rivas

You’re opposed to Love, its mania
for eternity frightens you,
its insistent nightingale whistle
drives you mad? You only want
to kiss what passes by in the everchanging
eternity of transience? — then
I’m your man! Untrue love never found
a more hospitable heart than mine
to perch in. As 1 arrive
so I leave: alone, and if the skies
remain mute so too does my heart.

But, listen: you won’t betray
your faithless soul. If you see a spark
of the son of man in my eyes, don’t try
to figure it out, or inquire too much into my
accent or what lies behind my laughter.

Where I desire exile and silence
don’t overstep the boundary. The white
vulture of Judgement nests there and only
the frown of a private life it sings!

Translated from Threnody for Joaquin Pasos & other poems
by Roger Hickin