Today, to have relations: and what it’s like
By Osvaldo Lamborghini
Translated by KM Cascia and Garrett Phelps
TERESA GALEANO, my mother, born November 20, 1900
in a little village in Buenos Aires Province—San Antonio de Areco, daughter
of a conservative caudillo: I, his grandson, that lady’s son
am brokenhearted / history passes through me
0000000000000000—and not—
through the old knife rusted by his puerile acts of bad faith
Yes / enemy of the people /
history /
history doesn’t pass through him: it passes through me
I was
I hereby declare that my mother has turned into a pathway
I was an adventurer and Sartre understood this / prologue to Stephane /
the I was first I WAS
thief active and passive homosexual and Sartre understood this / Saint
Saint Genet
and I—I— I can understand as well
but there are other things, above all, that I can understand:
the words the
the melody the
melody
of the words / every / word / each / melody
and I was a passive homosexual the anus
the complacent anus offered up to the phallus of words
0000000000000000—and then—
0000000000000000—here my autobiography commences—
Certainly I was certain: I wasn’t going to make any / dazzling / challenge /
save poetry———————————————this poem: save yourself
here commences here continues
the flavor of a recovered
00000000history
the shattering, the shards
that gather with the years—
the autobiographical shattering
I wrote The Fjord
I wrote The Proletarian Boy
I wrote a book of poems: Fetishism
I wrote a desperate letter to Chichita
00000000MARIA
00000000TERESA
00000000LAMBORGHINI
00000000000000000000000000my sister
asking for money and she didn’t rule it out / I was pleased she ruled in my favor
I wrote to her saying (though that’s a lie, you always write writing)
writing her by way of justification that my writing was on the point of triumph
—I yearn for
the moment when someone
someone right in front of me
bludgeons someone else’s face with a rifle butt
and a red blot erases that face—
I wrote to her justifying myself, knowing that No—No, triumph:
but bridges get built however they can,
Her
Mistress
Beautiful Headmistress of Labor
and Applied Sciences
At Mar del Plata University——————————————————
lOOk out, careful Terr-
000000000000000000000000000000000or, Cash
000000000000000000000000000000000they shit all over me got
000000000000000000000000000000000me good Shitheads
000000000000000000000000000000000in a few thousand
000000000000000000000000000000000bucks in the last,
000000000000000000000000000000000last chiribis—there was
000000000000000000000000000000000no encore—annoying: it was
000000000000000000000000000000000in nineteen hundred
00000000000000000000000000000000059, before there were
000000000000000000000000000000000many others, but
000000000000000000000000000000000after that there
000000000000000000000000000000000was no encore. And if Piss and
000000000000000000000000000000000Shitstorm, Shitstorm
000000000000000000000000000000000of Terror: the Fre-
000000000000000000000000000000000nch Revolution
000000000000000000000000000000000with its Red
000000000000000000000000000000000Guillotining with
000000000000000000000000000000000Blue Steel, the one
000000000000000000000000000000000that slashes itself
000000000000000000000000000000000with a lance, that
000000000000000000000000000000000French Revol-
000000000000000000000000000000000ution installed in
000000000000000000000000000000000a throat that offers
000000000000000000000000000000000itself up as a sac-
000000000000000000000000000000000rifice—————
————————————now, now I warble it——————
: warbling French Revolution
my heart
boat with no port
FOR SURE
talking about my sister (she) I forget my brother (he)
—everything made clear so there will be no reading errors
he who makes a printer’s error should have, will have to
have the words printed on him as he turns on a spit, slow fire
on slow, sinful flesh.
speaking of my sister our hands look alike
but I have a breakScar on my right /
I punched a window
and it, I and my hand shattered,
0000000000000I write
0000000000000write
0000000000000write
whose hands are these? Mine————————I write, write, write:
and yearn for that moment with the face erased red, but I understand:
driven into the root of these words
pierced is the year
000000000THE YEARS
that passed and passed.
II
This is the second part of the same text: divide and conquer
surely my story begins with that Teresean lady
little Teresa Galeano ENORMOUSMOTHER
imposing:
I look at my feet and I hate my feet
“no—in The Fjord—, she could neither accept her feet nor spit on them”
I am Piera
I hate my feet because Teresa’s feet are so lovely
and the thickness of my tears builds a tridimensional gaze
///// I look through diamonds /////
lamps covered in crystals in the dining room in the house
my father and the swords of his soldier friends,
00000000but everything was crystal
and her water broke and having been born I’ll be saved by access
to a kind of writing
confessional
megalomaniacal, crudely // mythomaniacal
0000000000crudely,
I rescue detestable Miller before the blow out
the last Scandinavian goose of Leon Bloy
and even the Three Goddamns
by which I divest myself of phlegm every morning when
I get up
00000Goddamn Gin
00000Goddamn Valium
0000000000Goddamn Cigarettes
in the end they’ll be there at the end too: So Writing too
turns into an immense crystal ball
And shatters
but for me (I’d rather say Sun)
but for me a lady mother, a mother lady ungiving / condemned me to a certain degree
of refined madness we’re
nothing!———————————————————————————————
and here,
when the air is a gash
with the (for me) wonder of a gash that doesn’t bleed
Here she comes, Mother, appears
appears in three places at once / the score for my departed tears
—journeys—
all gauchos are invited to look and listen
to listen / as if my mother were music or the memory of a robbery
0000000000000000000000000000000she
0000000000000000000000000000000she
0000000000000000000000000000000she
0000000000000000000000000000000on three
0000000000000000000000000000roads at once
00000000000000lightly drags her feet over the sand
00000000000000000000000000000000and leaves no footprints
why footprints
in a garden of crystal petals
and transparent hair that permits the radiography of the brain with a single glance
The Footprints Are In Me
TERESA GALEANO
she has carved the Form and Manner of her Foot in my flesh
And Robinson Crusoe was terrified…/ his virgin isle, his virgin isle /
I am terrified
and not, no:
this habit of tirelessly walking around the apartment
she never hit me on account of my friends ex-devotees of Devoto
000000000as Lozano believes
000000000friend of Luis
000000000LUIS GUSMÁN
is my mother’s foot, Mother, who travels and walks me
—Virgin and Mother figlia, daughter of your son
whore rapist of your son
Form
of the Virgin’s foot treading the head of a snake
—My bad faith had to shatter utterly and forever some time
Analyst Paula
listen
D I S E M B O D I E D
my Oedipus chained to my head
has now lost
all his flesh and his blood
Prometheus jerked off because they’d left him alone
My Oedipus is a gesture // gestalt //
Empty cultural face
screwed-up
And all the same I AM Oedipus
An Oedipus who kisses the feet of his hung mother
Who hangs from her legs to stop the body’s swaying
Who hangs from a rope
And kneeling
Tongues Licks
with his only tongue
possible Language
The still warm vagina of his hung mother:
0000000000000at the crucial moment
Tongues
faced with the possibility that history will continue
that the world
would have
a moment, a parenthesis (
I stick my head out onto the balcony but not to jump off
I’ll keep writing
He became impotent at that decisive moment: the fallen erection
Spengler would say much later
was the Decadence of the West
She
Offered herself to me
I
I
could not
But I didn’t blind myself. Blind myself? Never. I had nothing left in life
But to watch that feminine pendular body hang
That
Woman who killed herself because of my impotence
III
Understood
Bridges get built however they can
In the air
Though at both ends
Of the Bridge
Where the bridge ends
there will only be
Void————————————————————————To fill that void
Analyst
Analyst
Analyst
P A U L A,
0000000the misunderstood is common from the beginning
Your role, election or transference, has a name: anal-yst
But your relation to the analyzed is
it’s oral
And now I’m thinking about your body Anal
You were Horacio Pilar’s wife
And now we’ll be the perfect couple Oral
(now I’m destroying analysis
I’m sublimating—pornographic word—and still I’m not sublime:
Sublimation,
suicide would be the only kind possible,
with the little it costs to not understand,
here, on the margins of illness and the consciousness of
illness
Self-consciousness of one who sometimes walks clutching the walls
There has to be a “sublime” moment
and maybe in war as well
one 100 years long and one 1 minute long
or a second or even less. That
second of seeing
Because Oedipus was not blind
To look with great fear at the black hole
The tips of the bullets in the revolver’s drum
ClicK
the hammer has been cocked
I had a beautiful Spanish revolver that looked like the ones from the Far West
“what childish happiness when the shot rang out!”
they gave it to me in the Syndicate, the other story: political struggles //
and it was stolen for its defects, in custody
Learn this: imbeciles should never be in charge of custody,
and along with that Spanish revolver
My Weapon
that reminded me of the only language I speak
My Weapon
They also stole
A 45 pistol
And a parabellum that thundered
We made ourselves lords of a storm:
we’ve lost, for now
Lost and defeated: We’ll come back
(but not to some Third World beach destroyed by cowards)
We’ll talk about this again/ There’s time. The arcade
between agony and death is long And not short
like the Arcade Calandra Lark
in that neighborhood and I was born in my mother’s bed
She was blonde
and sang like a lark
Look, Paula, if you were a shopkeeper instead of a psychoanalyst
Look
If you passed me big glasses of gin
Through the bars
Little sister, which of us is the Prisoner?
As for me, castration blood oozes from the fringes of my loincloth
I place my invincible dagger in your hands
Paula, look
they told me about you
Ma’am
You’re blond
Just like Piera
And I am Piera
This dagger
This blond steel
and to Write Write Write a song
0000000000just one
the sword, the Authority of Crystal
Paula: historic partner
But hysteric partner in my case, hysteria of representation
Hysteria
I can even speak a language I don’t understand
Mimetic schizophrenic
GERMÁN and you already talked about me: I know it)
Historic partner all the same
Every era has its photographic album: Carabineros, Structuralism //
In it, the Album of this Era, they pose coldly
pretending not to look at each other
Analyst and Analyzed
the
Analyst
and the
Analyzed
And the circle closes like an Anus
IV
Kiss me, Jocasta, a long kiss like I was about to die of thirst at fountain’s edge
Jocasta
Jocasta
kiss me
A village summoned /// which is loneliness /// a park summoned
but this park
its grass smooth like the hair that twists from your vagina,
maybe there’s still a chance
that Jocasta I’ll chastely decapitate
my impossibilities
At times I’m impotent
But maybe there’s still a chance
Maybe laying down
I
on my back
over the freshness of the dew: certain traditions, certain tears
Maybe my penis could rise to your smile
Or maybe I could offer your smile my nipples
000000000but don’t abandon me
000000000but don’t abandon me
000000000but don’t abandon me
these nipples that have bloomed on me are your nightshirt’s flowers
lying on the bed, inviolable
0000000000000000violate me
To turn around
And I’ve turned around to offer myself to the male
It’s like you were never born when you go insane
And it’s even funny:
To pass from the confines of the uterus to the confines of the asylum
But are we in Greece, maybe
or Elizabethan England,
perhaps
with all the echoes, resonances
melo
melodies
of the poetry of Shakespeare and Donne,
or is it that maybe
we were tender
babes in arms?
00000000But don’t
0000000000000and don’t
00000000But don’t
don’t abandon me
Do me the favor
00000but also
History yes
and Representation
—Bad faith can’t last so long, it has to shatter sometime so much bad faith: I don’t have
any disorder // my senses // I have my Lying Apparatus much too ordered, one more lie:
then—being members of the MRP wasn’t doing much for us—then it’s very serious: I’m
sick.
And now I’ll try to interrupt my dialogue with you as little as possible, Jocasta: give me
a kiss //// I haven’t been able to sleep tonight with my every night anger ////
history——————hysteria and representation /// I’ve cried over the coming of the
morning that’s now here, I’ve dripped drool over the keyboard of this typewriter father
of music———————the morning———————that isn’t, is not a morning,
not a future!!——————only a light and the noise of the builders: Jocasta: you
launched me from the humidity of the thousand pink tongues in the interior of your
vagina // to sail // to sail a sea of excrement——————lines——————lines
to count the days———————what’s the date?———————lines: hysteria and
representation———————lines: the sea of excrement
L I N E S
L I N E S
L I N E S
Osvaldo Lamborghini, today, February 12, 1969
Osvaldo Lamborghini was born in Buenos Aires in 1940. An unpublishably obscene and untranslatably brilliant writer of poetry and prose, Lamborghini was a leading figure of the Neobaroque movement of the 70s and 80s. The three books of his work that appeared during his lifetime—El fiord, Sebregondi retrocede, and Poemas—had a devoted and often fanatical readership, which included novelist César Aira, who has since played a major role in Lamborghini’s posthumous reputation. He spent his final years in Barcelona, working on Teatro proletario de la cámara (“Proletarian Chamber Theater”), an immense cross-disciplinary project composed of writing, painting, pornography and photographic collage. He died, in exile, in 1985.
KM Cascia was born in Michigan City, Indiana in 1979. They are the translator of Manuel Maples Arce’s City: Bolshevik Superpoem in 5 Cantos (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) as well as numerous translations published in small outlets on- and offline, such as Apiary, Circumference, and Anomalous. Formerly an editor of the translation journals Asymptote and Calque, they are also the author of two collections of poems, Goethe and Days.
Garrett Phelps was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1990. His translations, poems and literary criticism have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail, Paintbucket and Asymptote, where he formerly served as Poetry Editor. He lives in Brooklyn.
Poesía en acción is an Action Books blog feature for Latin American and Spanish poetry in translation and the translator micro-interview series. It was created by Katherine M. Hedeen and is currently curated and edited by Olivia Lott with web editing by Paul Cunningham.