The Dance of the Chimeras (excerpt from the final section)
ISLANDS that float and disappear at the whim of the lake,
ISLANDS on which the Green Archer rests his feet,
Eagle of Trees,
Chieftain
of the Hunters,
setting
his quetzal-
plume
arrow
on the bow
of his palpitation
and
hurling it
into the blue blue
the
through
cends
as-
it
as
that
an arrow
de-
scends
through
the
mirror
of
the
lake
to wound Quadriheaven
aguayayay
aguayayay
Quadriheaven wounded...
wounded
by the reflection
of
an
arrow
in
the water
ay-aguayayay
aguayayay
truly wounded,
wounded by the reflection of an arrow
that in tearing his flesh of transparent lava,
disentangles copals, suns, navels, sounds, magics,
foams, bubbles, words, tattoos, colors,
macaws of frost, macaws of fire
aguacamay-ay
aguacamay
the wind
the
wind
the
wind
melaguaj
melaguaj
the
wind unraveled,
disentangled are the foams,
the navels, the suns, the copals, the magics,
the cabalistic bubbles, the bubbles that were taken by
the Goldthinking-star-gods
to make the Man-of-the-Four-Magics,
four heads, eight arms, eight eyes,
eight hands, eight legs, four hearts,
the man four times navel, four times virile,
four times artist, painter, sculptor, musician, poet,
the Man-of-the-Four-Magics-of-Heaven
who in truth was of bubbles of maize water
and all his art of bubbles,
a flower that lived in his hands and beyond his hands
the instant of all bubbles,
of all the ephemeral species.
Music of bubble holes, the melody of his reed.
Music of bubbling emptiness,
the tun-tun of the hollow logs.
And chill music, the crash
of the tiny globes of resounding air
on the surface of the keys of the marimbas.
And all his art of bubbles,
a flower that lived in his hands and beyond his hands
the instant of all bubbles,
of all the ephemeral species.
His poetry of blood bubbles, protected in the temples
by the quetzalbites of the sacred tufts,
rises from the boiling of the tropic of Cancer
and opens flowers of syrup, breathers of honey,
to all that boils, to all that exists,
real or sketched by miniaturists
who cover with bubbling writing
skins and bone-colored barks.
And all his art of bubbles.
Walls painted with quetzals,
walls painted with serpents,
figures painted alive over the mortar
and treated afterward in the sweet gold of the atmosphere.
Temples of jaguars that swim among bubbles of stone,
calendrical ciphers, round bubbles
of the mathematics of constellations.
Elastic ball-players behind the rubber bubble
that crosses the solitary hoop of the pelota game,
an image fleeting and fugitive from his art of trills,
from his art of bubbles now wounded...
Worlds unfastened,
substances set free,
confines untied,
the four corners of the sky demagnetized,
flowers stripped of leaves,
birds shattered,
the rain shells its maize,
it captures the lake in prisons of thread
and delivers it to the triumphant Rainbow,
Sir Seven Times Precious,
the Rainbow who advances with the feet of the hunters,
without danger of falling, coiled like a serpent
with color plumes, into the mirrors
of the stealer of tracks, the lake
that, with Quadriheaven wounded, is covered with bubbles,
baubles that hide
the remnants of his ephemeral arts.
Thus and only thus
could Quadriheaven be wounded
at midday,
with the reflection in the water
of an arrow shot
toward the sun.
Thus and only thus
could Quadriheaven be wounded,
vulnerable to the quetzal
that crosses the sapphire
toward the light.
Thus and only thus
could Quadriheaven be wounded,
vulnerable to the green
that crosses the blue
toward the yellow.
Thus and only thus
could Quadriheaven be wounded,
at midday,
in time with the kettledrums,
in the game-dance-of-the-arrows,
the dance of the chimeras.
Paris, Summer, 1963.
Sinaia (Romania), Winter, 1964.
Venice, Naples, Milan, Rome, Genoa, 1964.
Completed in Genoa on July 13, 1964.