so quickly — barely eight seconds.
Here it comes again.
The same one?
As if that mattered.
The young man sweeping
the hotel courtyard so energetically,
so different from the old man yesterday morning,
seems to have his mind elsewhere.
Sweeping, because it lets you dream,
is a subversive activity.
This morning it’s not Césaire
I feel like reading
but Lanza del Vasto
who was able to be satisfied
with a cool glass of water.
I need a man of serenity
not some guy seething with anger.
I don’t want to think.
Just see, hear and feel.
Note it all down before I lose my head,
drunk on this explosion of tropical
colors, smells and tastes.
I haven’t been part of a landscape like this
for so long.
In the slum called Jalousie (because of how close the luxury villas are, which tells us something about the sense of humor you need to live there) the little girl woke up before the others to go fetch water. I follow her with the binoculars the hotel owner lent me. She climbs the mountainside like a young goat, with a plastic bucket on her head and another one in her right hand. I lose sight of her as I scan the neighborhood waking up. There she is again. Her wet dress flat against her thin young body. The guy with the mustache and the tie sipping coffee on his gallery watches her too.
Let us carefully observe the scene.
Close-up on the face of the mustached guy.
His intense concentration
on the dance of the girl’s hips.
The slightest movement of that wonderfully supple body
is absorbed by his greedy little eyes.
The nose awakens to the scent.
The cat leaps.
Claws buried in the back of her neck.
The girl’s arched back.
Not even a cry.
Everything happened
in his head
between two sips of coffee.
I sit on the veranda
and gently place the binoculars
at the foot of the chair.
Warmed by the sun
already strong at six in the morning
I soon slip into sleep
both light and deep.
Almost asphyxiated
by the smell of warm blood
that goes to my head.
The butcher is cutting
beneath my window.
The machete whistles.
A red rainbow in the air.
The cut throat of a young goat.
The animal seems to smile in its pain.
Its eyes, soft green, find mine.
What is there beyond such sweetness?
Its neck breaks
like a cane field bent low by the breeze.
Behind me the owner
smiles with her eyes.
Her long experience
of pain
should be taught
in these days
when we learn everything
except how to face
the storms of life.
The Human River
I step into the street
to bathe
in the human river
where more than one swimmer drowns
each day.
The crowd chews over the naïve fresh meat
of all those exiles who hope to recover
the years of absence in their energy.
I’m neither the first nor the last.
On the sidewalks.
In the parks.
In the middle of the street.
Everyone buying.
Everyone selling.
They try to trick poverty
through constant movement.
My eyes take in the scene.
Peasants listening to their transistors.
Hoodlums on motorbikes.
Girls working the street by the hotel.
The music of flies
above green mud.
Two bureaucrats slowly crossing the park.
Zoom in on that girl laughing on the sidewalk across the street with a cell phone jammed in her ear. A car stops next to her. Strident honking — as if the driver’s hand were stuck on the horn. The girl pretends not to hear. The driver goes on his way. Laughter from the fruit vendors who witness the scene.
Primary colors.
Naïve motifs.
Childlike vibrations.
No space left empty.
Everything full to the brim.
The first tear will cause
this river of pain in which
people drown, laughing, to
overflow.
Proud carriage.
Empty belly.
The moral elegance of the girl
who walks past me
for the third time in five minutes.
Without a look in my direction.
Attentive to my slightest move.
Have you ever considered a city
of more than two million people
half of whom are literally starving to death?
Human flesh is meat too.
How long can a taboo
stand up to sheer necessity?
Fleshly desires.
Psychedelic visions.
Sidelong looks.
They’d like to devour
their neighbor for lunch.
Like one of those mangos
with such smooth skin.
A man whispers something into the ear
of his friend who smiles discreetly.
A gentle breeze lifts the woman’s dress
as she runs laughing to hide behind a wall.
Drops so fine
I didn’t realize it was raining.
Pain takes a time out.
This undecided lizard,
after much thought,
jumps from its branch.
A grass-green flash
cuts through space.
I am in this city
where nothing
for once
happens besides
the simple pleasure of being alive
under the blazing sun
at the corner of Vilatte and Grégoire Streets.
Hundreds of paintings covered in dust hang on the walls, all along the street. They look as though the same artist painted them all. Painting is as popular as soccer in this neighborhood. The same luxuriant landscapes remind us that the artist doesn’t paint the real country but the country of his dreams.
I ask that barefoot painter
why he always paints trees bending low
under the weight of ripe heavy fruit
when everything around him is desolation.
You understand, he tells me with a sad smile,
who would want to hang in his living room
what he can see out the window?
What Happened to the Birds?
When I see that teenager sitting by himself
on the branch of a mango tree
strumming away on a battered old guitar,
I understand that amateur musicians
have taken over from the birds.
All that boy needs
is a pair of transparent wings.
A man who knew me thirty-five years ago comes up to me, arms open. With abundant details and flying spittle, he conjures up memories I’d completely forgotten and, worse, that don’t interest me. I try to avoid his eyes as we speak. What started as a wonderful reunion has turned into torture. I’m waiting for him to get to the point: money. In the end he moves on without asking anything of me. I might have underestimated him. As I walk, I try to retrace the thread of his story. Why didn’t I listen to him more carefully? Because of his dirty clothes, his black fingernails, his toothless mouth? If he had been cleaner and more prosperous, would I have paid him more attention? Even if he opened the photo album of my teenage years before my eyes.
This old gentleman slightly bent at the waist
sweeping dry leaves
that have fallen into the courtyard of the city hall.
An activity that must take him all day.