Roberto Bolano

coffeebreak: Bolaño I | Bolaño II | Bolaño III



ROBERTO BOLAÑO

April 28, 1953 - July 15, 2003

Chilean Novelist and Poet

Hecatomb

for Roberto Bolaño

You spoke of a spiritual hecatomb
The sacrifice of one hundred oxen
Offered to the Oracle
The god of truth
Poetry and music
You spoke of a song
The children's crusade
Death and the mountain
Helicoidally spliced
Now we the worthless
Unsolicited revelators
Overturn all tables
Cash in our chips
And speak of this
Infiltration
Canonization
Apocalyptic celebration
We spit seed scrub hands
Sprinkle barley meal pray
Before the altar of your tome
The world that is all worlds
And the broken lyre of Apollo
And slaughter's curving saw
We speak of the iron circle
A holy hecatomb in your name
Though not butchered all at once
Methodically three-minute intervals
A finale of one hundred fireworks
Slowed down shot off one at a time
So the spectators astonished mouth
Remains open for as long as it takes
As for the oxen figure 3 x 100
A rite of three hundred minutes
A poem of perpetual death
Trumping the Greeks
In the precinct of the Muse
These oxen are as birds
Transitive barely rehearsed
Long legged grey as elephants
With sad spasmodic gestures
Each a poem spread eagle
With a multicolored skirt
Hiked over the face
Wrapped in the wings
Of swollen laughter
These oxen are babes
Wallowing in the dust
Pining the woodcutter
Whose axe was alive
Their tears evaporate
Like sweat on the back
Of the neck of a laborer
From the southern border
Where there are no borders
Where bards and assassins
Scrape encrypted soles
Of incriminating shoes
And crumbling hearts
Write of your St. Teresa
A city shaped like a dress
Pierced at the breast
Dripping wands of blood
A retablo of sacred laundry
White limbs white feet
Skipping indiscreet fires
Pale hide swaddled thigh
Quivering upon a spit
Beneath the moon lamp
A spreading horn sounds
We are slaves reborn
The lowing of oxen
Strung as a menagerie
About a giant's throat
We are his proud head
Bursting like a bubble
In a golden syringe
We are oxen of the sun
Tossing burning shirts
Upon the gravest course
A poet's coat is skin
With pockets of chasm
Lined in Iambic verse
His knife is a toy
Spiraling the universe
Tagging a curving sky
A trilogy of numbers
Sealing a wired skull
He expands his bony torso
Dives the lifeblood pond
Unleashing for all time
A hundred laurel wreaths
And your body conjured
Raise your crosspiece
Rise through the center
Dance upon the water
A slow tempo dance
Quaking the earth
With your ecstatic fury

—Patti Smith, 2010


 
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