Nighthawks

The origin of all things…when was it?

It must have been that night. Night is the great machine.

Now it’s time to invent a soul for them, a word,
now one must make a pact of motherhood.
Or maybe it’s the other way around: maybe each word

is a search for the thing that names.

Juan Andrés García Román,
The Splintered Match (DVD, 2008)

We are against a wall here but I have to tell you if the night is on full blast with its air of

Italian wine and its late nights you and I you ask aloud you and I you ask you ask perhaps if

there can be a

you

if there can be an

We are here looking at each other’s belly buttons einander looking at our nocturnal selves

looking at our nervous selves and I would like to ask you yes it’s ok if you spend the night

with me but to ask you

to ask you

to wake up

for tomorrow

tomorrow

is yours

and not only the inconclusive windmills of the night.

You can call me whatever you want you have my permission but

you

wake up

tomorrow is too clear

and my retinas are sensitive are too sensitive in the dark and your eyes are footsteps of owls

and they have squirrel feet the word

the word

you can change my name

common nouns

to call me squirrel

or moth

or deserver of light

or suicidal butterfly

you can call me

animal or waist

but

wake up wherever you are

wake up

the light is not only yours

wake up this time.

Translated by Heath Wing

“Nighthawks” is from the book Epidermia, (El Gaviero Ediciones, 2011).

You can read and listen to the poem in the original Spanish here.