Sky, Your Big Arch

Hanni Ossott (Caracas, 1946-2002)




If it doesn't come
if it doesn't arrive
let it be

That is there, always
like a convocation

If it doesn't come
wait
The moon's song has its time.

October 1987





This anguish
for the Egyptian poet
the old one, the most archaic one
the one who saw the Nile's cobalt blue
the black blue
This shame
for his already forgotten word
amidst the desert's infinite sands

My head
placed there
at the shores of what thinks and expands
Knowing God
Knowing the stars

My mind, swollen like a sphere
palpitating
sonorous
for a vastness much too big for me

My heart
pulsing in weeping
for the small and insignificant

My hands, already weakened
duplicated in the mistake

My eyes, useless, trembling
before what I don't know.

December 1987





My Hands

My hands
My hands on my body
the ring, the rings
the wrinkles, the lines
the tension in the seizure
the secret, the secrets
the unspoken word

Him, there
like an embrace
like tensed love
and the house there
in the hand

at hand

the marks, the tracks,
my vegetable feather
my veins
the sarcasms, the moles
the rivers of profanity

My hand
furrowed by rivers
bleeding
voluptuous
swollen

filled with hills and entrails
of whites and reds
lines and crevices

My hand, my hands

December 1987





This, the quotidian
the small, flush with
for magnifying the big
for reverence and weeping
for God.

This, the specular
that sideways...
the little cat.
The call
the reverent convocation
That seat
that sacred perch
for what no longer has any skin
nor blood.

December 1987





God kneel down before me
the blue crosses me
Kiss me
My eyes glimpse at you.

March 1988





Pity

My heart
is trembling
asking
for the words
the voracious words
a man's glance
his disembodied gestures
the moon and splendor
the boredoms.

Enumerations.

All because of the mystery crossing me.

The interrogation.

May 1988





Party

And everyone

destroyed in the party

lying.

By axe blows.

Godless.

In a useless chatter.

June 1988





Sky, your big arch
and what of me?

June 1988





Because of the Undifferentiated

Of a coarse voice the earth

in cracks

with the fissure aloft

shouting

furiously

because of the detail

the edges

the mixtures.

Her angrily

because of the undifferentiated

the promiscuous junctures

June 1988





Nobody

Some flowers for the table

for the earth

the opaque sky

the music



Some petals, pollen, waters

for melancholy

A desert, in back

silence, gravity

and nobody, nobody

June 1988




Hanni Ossott, Cielo, tu arco grande (Caracas: Tierra de Gracia Editores, 1989).