THE KING OF HARLEM

With a spoon
he scooped out eyes of crocociles
and banged on the monkey butts.
With a spoon.

The fire of time still slept in the flint
and the scarabs drunk on anise
forgot the moss of the villages.

Theat old man covered with mushrooms
moved to the corner where the black men were wailing
and the tubs of rotting water went by
while the spoon of the king crackled.

The roses fled on the edges
of the last curves of the wind,
and on the heaps of saffron
the small boys mauled the tiny squirrels
flushed with a stained exaltation.

The bridges must be crossed
and the blackness reached
so the perfume of our lungs
may beat against our temples with the vestures
of burning pine-cone.

We must kill the blond huckster of whisky,
and all of the friends of apple and sand,
and we must smash with tight closed fists
the small kidney-beans that tremble in the bubbles of air,
so the king of Harlem may sing with his multitude,
so the crocodiles may sleep in the long lines
beneath the moon's amianthus,
so that no one may doubt the undying beauty
of the feather-dusters, the graters, the kitchen brass
and the casseroles.

Oh, Harlem! Oh, Harlem! Oh, Harlem!
No sorrow to equal your crimsons enslaved,
or the fierce blood of your dark eclipse,
or the dea-mute violence preciousin your vague borders,
or your mighty chained king, robed in janitor's cloth!

**********

The night had cracks and quiet ivory salamanders,
And the American girls
carried children and money in their bellies
and the boys, arms and legs stretched, passed out on the cross.

They are the ones.
They are the ones who drink silver whisky at the foot of volcanoes
and gulp small pieces of heart on the frozen heights of the bear.

On that night the king of Harlem with a hard, hard spoon
scooped out the eyes of the crocodiles
and banged on the monkey butts.
With a spoon.
The blacks, confused, cried out
under parasols and suns of gold,
the mulattoes pulled on condoms, anxious to fall upon a white body,
and the wind spotted the mirrors
and opened up the veins of the dancers.

Blood has no exit in your night with its belly up to the sky.
There is no blush. Raging blood hidden by black skin,
lives in the thorn of the dagger and in the breast of the countryside,
beneath the pincers and the brooms of Cancer's celestial moon.

translated by Prospero Saiz