BackSailor
The recapitulation of the life the Sailor had left behind before coming to the city
I had lived in an island full of shadows,
There amidst the whispering hills I had seen days flying in the birds’ wings trailing the changing darkness and lights,
I had seen the mists,
Heard the shivering songs of the rivers meandering beneath.
There the thoughts had murmured and trembled in the heart in the golden wings,
From this place I had wished to fly to the threshold beyond the rocky heights,
In a strange wandering I wanted to cross the skyline defined by the shining beams.
Leaning , dreaming, awakening, lifting the head,
I had gazed at the blue sky over “there” in the sunny blaze,
In the sunlight I had wished to rise and be happy again in the trembling joy and warmth of the flesh,
In the colourful lights,
I had wished to regain paradise,
In the glittering pearls of light jittering on the waves,
I had dreamt of the journey to the fairy land beyond the limits of time and space.
On a blue summer evening I had went down the path,
Very far, along the countryside,
In the swirling waves sailing across the sunny light,
On the waving bulges where nothing whatever were visible but lights,
I had wished to leave the life that was a battle ground,
Beyond the valleys of the earth wanted to cross the world full of noise and sound.
When the blue water, with great conquering might,
Had tossed across my flesh ,
That the slaveries of nature wished to renounce,
I wished to be free from the earthly captivity where I had felt prison bound.
Slowly as I had sailed,
The eternal thoughts had come from the radiant bosoms of the sea where the waves had swelled,
Under the vast sky I had felt possessed,
As the man made of clay,
Fashioned by Prometheus , riding on the waves,
I had searched freedom of the gods towards Heaven’s way.
Happy and proud, bathing in the solar rays,
Quivering in the sensations of the flesh,
Happily I had sailed to plumb the greater depth,
In the silent unfathomable space ,
Where the stars had teemed as candles in the altar in a Mess,
Free...free ...under the golden sun,
That trembled in the waves and churned foams that turned and returned,
In a journey beyond the boundary of the time and space, the moon and the sun,
As a creature made of Prometheus I had sought the chariot of the light with which I would return ,
And win Paradise, from where Prometheus was thrown for bringing the fire from heaven for the mortal men’s and women’s daughters and sons.
In the splendour of the mind and the flesh ,
As a progeny of the titan sailing in the solar blaze,
Baccus’ chariot ascending to heaven scattering the golden grapes,
Apollo’s swans flying over the head,
The sunlights, like the solar Lion, tearing the flesh and freeing the mind in the adamantine blaze,
The blue waves in folding marvels, like the Bull of heaven, charging the breast,
Creating the swirling passions and eddies and unrest,
In the vision a part of Hercules ascending from the pyre to heaven and a part descending to hell,
Between the foams of passions rolling in strangely beautiful streamlines where the waves shatter and break,
And the open sphere where heaven and freedom cradle the souls in the arching marvel beyond the domain of the living and dead,
In that summer evening I had unfurled the sails to escape pain, suffering, drugery and death.
But it was a delirium,
After I had passed forests, woods, undulating meadows of grapes and vines,
As the night had surged with billowing waves and stars appeared in night’s face,
Under the starry world I had felt vertigo and the violent winds piercing the flesh,
At midnight when the moonlight had darkened the vision,
The stars in the milky way,
The swarms of asteriods blazing and burning in the infinite darkness hanging over the waves,
Had filled the sky like the blazing dragon’s feathers shooting rays,
I had felt a great stiring in the heart,
Like phantoms of heaven in the constellations of stars seen the approach of the threatening disaster,
Under the sign of the Scorpion that pursued Orion - the great hunter,
Over the dark ocean facing Gibraltar where Heracles and Odysseus had gone to offer blood and sacrifice to the divine altar,
I had floated downwards,
As a soul sailed alone in the universe.
While as a victim of the night I had heard the wave’s roar,
Ferocious tides had ripped and hauled away the oars,
In the hissing storms’ sea-borne quakening,
Truimphant clamours of the rolling waves where the ferocious dragons were awakening,
I have felt horror of the dragon’s wings, fierce claws, that meditated destruction and ruin,
In the distant cataracts, glaciers and hideous gulfs felt the shivering drama of the downfall with the cataclysmic wind.
Wearily wandering under the pole,
Hurled by hurricane, sodden with water, rocked by the rhythms of the watersprouts breaking on the prow,
Rising and falling with the swirling currents causing jerking blows,
Scudding across the deck like a dead-drunk sailor sinking in his boat,
In this journey through the sea I had rolled back and forth,
In the bottomless night,
Amidst millions and millions of stars awake in the height ,
From archepelagoes to archepelagoes,
In nature’s force I had sailed through cavernous passages of the heart,
The cyclades of hearing, smell and touch,
Crossed the gaping, yelping, anfractuous rocks of melancholy, amusements, and comforts,
Seen chimeria of reason,
Felt vertigo, derilium of light , experinced mind’s storms, cyclones and terrible pain,
Witnessed the iridescent wings and claws of the flying dragon once bound in chain.
It was when the life was a feast , wine and revelling in beauty in the libidenous plane,
In sabath night in witches’ arms a dancing sacrilege,
In wealth, luxury and mendacity a loathsome trade,
Or when compassion , crucifixtion, journey to the Holy land
Were viewed as contradictions with science and reason of the reflective man,
Physics, philosophy, technology , mechanics carried evidence of the science as the only way to progress,
Chemistry, cosmology, mathematics the prejudices of the miracles and witchcrafts redressed,
In reason, rationality and numbers man discovered principles and laws that could heaven and hell eradicate,
In the freedom of the spirit when man had marched forward to know things as certain for himself ,
I had sailed alone ...alone ... myself.
In this age there were betrayal, brutality,
Everybody were left alone to himself,
While the merchants, bankers, doctors, techonocrats, beurocrats, squeezed the universe of pleasure in the luxurious drawing rooms,
Without clothes, without food, without shelters the weaks were left roaming in frost and cold in despair and gloom,
Nudity, and different postures of sex became a bussiness in boom,
Erection, copulation , vulgarity , nausea, pelvis pain were served as best public entertainments in cinema, theatres and cafes that were in bloom,
Drums, dance, noise, debauchery, deliquency raised the demons from the tombs,
Orgies and all relations that were forbidden before passed as rights of freedom in liberated rooms,
Men married men, women married women,
And the maniacs, believing it as the work of the Magistrates of Satan, preached the world’s doom.
Man delighted in the fatal powers of the machines,
Fanning the impious feelings yielding to the violence and terror of the sort man had never before seen,
To live selfishly with passion eternally without caring for any sin became their greatest dreams,
In the ring of flames hailed the fire of flesh that burnt from beneath,
In drunkeness of self-love orchestrated orgies to integrate the impulses of anarchy in the mass,
With canons, machine guns and mortars,
Manipulated rationality, morality, humanity and the ignorance of the hearts,
With propaganda in the morning papers or evening trascripts or magazines devoted to the magnets, tycoons and stars,
And advertisements of all sorts that created ravenous drifts,
Paralysed the will of man who were forced to put their souls to Devil as bids.
Treachery, lechery, gluttony, everything that are possible when man has no faith,
Grew uninhibited in the name of happiness of the bankers, industrial and military men with stiff proud necks,
Massacres, cynicisms, prostituitons, cunnings and comforts marched with science and technology in a monsterous race,
In damnation man found heaven in a blasmphamous hellish landscape.
In this landscape floating downwards in the stream,
In alcohol, women, music and ferments of love and dream,
I have stretched the wings of freedom like a bird ,
Flying over the swamps and holes of the heart,
Fallen in the abyss of the mind that brings disaster,
Beyons the glaciers, the sun lit evening sky, the waves glittering as pearls,
Hurled by the hurricanes of the heart I had fallen in the black cave beyond the giant gulf,
Drunk, pale-eyed, crushed and wrecked by the ultramarine waves,
I was thrown in the bottom of the sadness where the Beelzebub sat as a wake.
I donot remember when I was awake,
How have I come to this city from the place where I was thrown amidst the wreck ?
I hear a clock chimes and announces that it is noontime,
I hear people converse,
Like violins playing capricious notes absurdly try to catch and understand the sounds of the hearts’ lonely passageways,
I see grand shopping ways, marble buildings like coffins of stones,
The pricelists, tickets in the showcases that speak impromptu about the company names, brands and fashions of the celebrities ,
Describe styles, tastes, the elegance of the department stores’ models that are hollow from head to feet decorated with advertisements using all sorts of novelties,
Everywhere there is a sign of freedom, bussiness, and possesion,
How shall I find my way through this labyrinth of damantion to my destination?
TO THE CITY IN PAIN