Spiritual Experience by Cristina Peri Rossi

Spiritual Experience

By Cristina Peri Rossi

Translated by Diana Decker

She told me that she was looking for a spiritual experience
a very serious thing
in the world there were some two thousand religions
without taking into account the sects

but she wanted something else
“I want a spiritual experience”
she told me

I believe that I hadn’t had that
I had had war experiences
and revolutions sensorial experiences
musical experiences work experiences

unless we consider that being in ecstasy in front of a Turner or
Caspar David Friedrich shipwreck

was a spiritual experience

unless reading J.G. Ballard
or Vallejo’s poems
were spiritual experiences

I had also had several experiences with sunsets
splendid in the port of Santa Maria
the Southern light, the brilliant light of the South,

but she told me that it wasn’t about any of that
it wasn’t about the sadness that Chopin’s études caused me
or Satie’s Gymnopédies which now are in the cell phones

she told me it was something else

Then she went to India
and I didn’t follow her
because I have seen much misery in this world

without reaching the necessary degree of spirituality

She spent some two years in India
and when she returned she was slimmer
How are you doing? she asked me
The usual, I answered

I write a bit read some play mahjong in the internet

sometimes a car hits me

but in general, I continue without having spiritual experiences
so I asked her how had it been in India
and she answered that well
very well
she had had a spiritual experience

-she said-

that turned all orgasms
frivolous and ridiculous

I thought that for that it wasn’t necessary to go to India
it was enough having reached menopause.

Prayer by Cristina Peri Rossi

 

Cristina Peri Rossi

Prayer

Deliver us, Lord,

from meeting

years later,

with our great loves.

The Passion by Cristina Peri Rossi

 

The Passion

by Cristina Peri Rossi

Translated by Diana Decker

Cristina Peri Rossi / La pasión

We emerged from love
as if from an aerial catastrophe
We had lost our clothes
our documents
I was missing a tooth
and you had lost track of time
Was it a year as long as a century
or a century as short as a day?
Among the furniture
around the house
broken rubble:
glasses photos torn books
We were survivors
of a collapse
of a volcano
of raging waters
And we parted with the vague feeling
of having survived
though we didn’t know what for.

To Live Twice by Cristina Peri Rossi

 

To Live Twice

by Cristina Peri Rossi

Translation by Arturo Desimone

Cristina Peri Rossi / Vivir dos veces

Memory is an overlife.
While I lean to kiss you
to caress your bosoms
I think of the overlife that shall supervene me
in your memory

I will live beyond my years
in the seam of your neck so white
as the lunar glow
one evening, in Calella,
in the month of August,
year: two thousand and six,

I will live beyond my years
in your memory of a nocturnal woman
who, from the cot, gazes
at the window through which a city like a Richard Estes painting
flickers its lights on and off
between the billboards of Banks and of Safe-houses
cars and offices 

I will live beyond my years
in your memory  
of the woman who, in loving me loves herself within my love 

and you will remember the feather crest 
with which you covered your nakedness 

and the bottle of water fallen in the midst of kisses
and the glow of your muted television
which blankly illuminated our bodies
darkening them at times
like under-eyelid-halfmoons in the middle of the skin
Memory is an overlife
As I lean to kiss you
I know I live doubly
the time of this lukewarm autumn night
on which I caressed you by my hands
with my fingers with thoughts and with my voice
and the double-life and your memory
in which we loved
beyond time itself
in the middle 
in the middle of an illuminated 
and silent city
which does not sleep

because we held the vigils
we kept the vigils of enjoyment
the vigils of love.

Cristina Peri Rossi / My Home is Writing

Cristina Peri Rossi

My Home is Writing 

by Cristina Peri Rossi

In the last twenty years
I have lived in more than one hundred different hotels
(Algolquín, Hamilton, Humboldt, Los Linajes,
Grand Palace, Victor Alberto, Reina Sofía, City Park)
in distant cities
(Quebec and Berlin, Madrid and Montreal, Córdoba
and Valparaíso, Paris and Barcelona, Washington
and Montevideo)
always in transit
like the boats and trains
metaphors for life
coming and going
in a constant stream
I tended no plants
I tended no dog
I tend only the years and the books
I leave abandoned anywhere
that another
might read them, might dream with them.
In the last twenty years
I have lived in more than one hundred different hotels
in houses transient as days
fleeting as memory.
Which home is mine?
Where do I live?
My home is writing
I dwell in her like the house
of the errant daughter
the prodigal
who always returns to see familiar faces
the only fire that never dies.
My home is writing
house of one hundred doors and windows
alternately opening and closing
When I lose one key
I find another
when a window closes
I break down a door
At last
pious whore
like all whores
writing spreads her legs
embraces me receives me
envelopes and surrounds me
seduces and protects me
omnipresent mother.
Mi home is writing
her rooms and landings
attics and thresholds opening
to other thresholds
passages leading to chambers
full of mirrors
where one can lie
with the only company that never fails:
words.

Cristina Peri Rossi / Saturday Night

SATURDAY NIGHT

by Cristina Peri Rossi

Translated by Tatiana de la Tierra

In the solitary dawn
through drifting secondhand smoke
and sidewalks sticky with spit
I go out walking
to escape the nocturnal silence of my room 
seeking bright lights 
oh, those neon friends who always ward off 
my internal wolves 
my hungry demons
(my Vallejo ancestors). 
I go in search of something 
losing myself in the narrow streets round the harbor 
looking for company, 
oh, the sweet drugs that since Baudelaire 
have run along the gutters of cities at nighttime 
—London, Paris, New York, Madrid— 
oh, the unknown flesh that stirs, aroused by a look. 
Finally I find it: some sleazy joint that’s still open 
a prison cell of solitary pleasures 
a peep show hidden between the trees: 
a bookstore open all night 
where I can wallow among the books 
luxuriate in other people’s verses 
and finally reach orgasm 
with one of Allen Ginsberg’s self-destructive poems.