Virgilio Piñera / Poem to be Said in the Midst of a Great Silence

Virgilio Piñera
Poster by T.A.

Poem to be Said 

in the Midst of a Great Silence

by Virgilio Piñera
BIOGRAPHY

Translated by Pablo Medina

Can it be they are going to kill?

Will they pierce the heart with a huge knife?

And with the sharpest scalpel empty the eyes?

And with the steeliest chisel break the skull?

And with the most hammer of hammers crush the bones?

Can it be that on the erotic table

--table of sex, table of love--

my love, you and I,

being startled one night

your heart spoke

when you were under my blood?

Can it be the same as it was

when it was an oath, and even more so,

your work, your word bled,

soaked by the soft perfume of kisses,

so as not to deny, to be one indivisible?

And can it be so blindly believed,

so blindly, that all the suns go dark forever

while the soul travels in darkness?

Can it be there never was a soul despite the waves of music we made?

Soul that never was though soul you might be for an instant?

Remember that instant when you were a soul and adored me,

and then your own monster came suddenly

to take you to the place where being you were?

Can it be that after you are no longer,

when not being is merely a mound of dried out kisses,

you will be by not being, instead being love?

(1967)