1.
First there was October and the hair flew brutally to the sky,
the dogs and hedgehogs started to fight
among the pylons of the Brooklyn Bridge; and then the blacks
from the subway started to sing.

There were dead and injured people, the papers
plastered with boldfaced headlines
and my stuffed snapshots.

Later in the afternoon, fireworks cheered pale faces.
Between tin cans and the falls, the stereo and coca-cola
there glided only the sound of the screen freed of pictures.

There was no rain, there were no anesthetics:
the phantom of freedom cruised the unreachable blueness.
2.
California is far away. I rarely went there.
A glance at silicone breasts is the only stimulating thing.

The vignettes of the artificial world are melancholic. I put them
in a box, turned on the light, and stared at the dry summer night:
the riders of waves finished rotating, the guys
from the beach, crushed singles, the whole epoch of filigree plastic.

Sometimes my eyes hurt from all this. I overflow
in a masked cloth then and unfurl a text, textile, telepathy . . .

After all this, a beautiful and sad girl
in me bids me good night.

1992

Translation: Mario Suško