Elegiac Optimism

To hell with it!
For all eternity
I'm stuck on the end of the abyss
My feet are taking root into the rock.
I'll start to look like those
crooked, sinewy and ugly shrubs
That even there sprout
where the mountain goat would never venture.But from this instant on
The inconvenience will turn into a virtue
In peculiar colors, I'll bloom,
Unknown fruit, I'll bear
(Each fruit with distinct shape and flavor)
Some will conjecture they are sweet,
Others will argue they are poisonous.Ah, mediocre artists will
paint me,
Photographers will take pictures of me
Against the sun.

You, Sweet Agony . . .

My first dying—
as an experience—
was exceptional.
The repetitions have worn out the feeling.
The anticipation of the very death, however—
whiff, timber, flavor, vision—
produces sweeter thrills.
Each time.
As if, half incorporeally,
you made love
to your own self.
("You possess the way
you would possess a mirror."
K. Pavlov) And you are born—
out of yourself again.
All at once,
a son, a father and a twin
of yourself.
How should I articulate it -
a peculiar double:
you are already THERE
and you are still HERE.There is the instant.
This instant . . . The rest is boredom, a ritual.—My respects to you, dull hag;
you could've changed at least the sheets.

Capriccio for/about Goya

The old horror is already gone
brutally absolute and brutally infinite,
no grimaces and no witticism.The horror is changing his character;—
he pats me familiarly on the shoulder,
condescendingly woos me
and toys with the idea of himself:
"We two are equally strong,
only that you're a little handsomer."
And he then smiles at me.Ah, it's this smile that makes him vile;
a pervert
and a lunatic.

And I choke with strange repulsion
as if toddlers in beards and moustache
strewed lascivious kisses over me.