Esta noche se parece
a un enano que crece
—De Ory

Two poets 20 and 23 years old,
Naked in bed with the shades drawn
Intertwine themselves, suck nipples and
Erect cocks, between
Vaguely literary moans
While one's older sister curled up in the armchair by the TV,
Eyes enormous and scared,
Observes the great metallic wave of the Pacific
In scans of capricious fragments and discontinuous trails,
And screams: Fascism, fascism, but only I
Hear her, I
The writer locked in the guest room
Uselessly trying to dream up
An ideal letter
Full of adventures and pointless anecdotes
To cover up the real letter,
The terrifying letter of parting
And of a certain kind of
Occasional amnesia,
While the poet's sister bangs the doors of empty rooms
Like someone banging the successive doors of Thought
And screams or whispers fascism,
At the moment when, with two dry bangs, the 20-year-old poet butt fucks
The 23-year-old poet who goes ugh ugh,
A 23-centimeter cock like an iron worm
In the 23-year-old poet's rectum,
And the 20-year-old poet's mouth clings like hyssop
To the 23-year-old poet's
Neck
And the 20-year-old poet's little ivory teeth
Seek out muscles, joints, the bone in the neck,
In the nape, smell the cerebellums
Of the 23-year-old poet.
And the sister screams
Fascism, fascism, a strange fascism, sure, a fascism nearly translucent
Like the butterfly of deep forests,
Though what prevails in her eyes is the Great Metallic Wave
Of the Pacific
And the poets scream
Fed up with such hysteria:
Once and for fucking all stop reading fucking
Raúl Zurita!
And at the very moment they say Zurita
They come,
So that the surname of our national poet
Is proffered almost in agony
Like a free fall into the boiling alphabet soup
Of poetry
And then silence settles on the toys
And the wind, a wind from another continent and even maybe
From another time, passes through
The wooden house, slips
Under doors, under
Beds, under armchairs,
And the young poets get dressed and go out for dinner
At Los Meandros restaurant, also called
La Sevillana Ilustrada
In homage to the owner,
A specialist or maybe just well versed
In Bocángel and Juan Del Encina
And the older sister cries
Curled up in the armchair touched by the moon
And her hiccups move about the wooden house
Like a ghost squad,
Like a squad of lead soldiers,
Till they tear me from my dreams full of naivety and mutations,
My vaporous dreams
From which I emerge with a start
Warned of danger by an angel
And then I smooth my hair and my flowered shirt
Before stepping into the hallway to see what's going on,
But only the night breeze and the sound of the sea
Answer my questions.
And what is it that grows like hair on dead skulls?
And what is it that grows like nails on talons,
The talons that Destiny took upon herself—just because—to hold wake over
And bury in the skirts of a mountain of ash?
Life, I suppose, or this star-governed inertia,
The epiphany in the double mouth of one whose throat has been slit.
And I saw the young poets walk hand in hand
Along the Paseo Marítimo, moving away from the Yacht Club like magical junks
Straight toward Pigeon Rock,
Which cuts the bay in two.
And I saw the older sister hidden
Beneath the bed
And said come out of there, stop crying, no one will hurt you, it's me,
The guy who rents the room upstairs.
And in her eyes, in the condensation of her eyes,
I saw the night travel at 30 knots an hour
Through the sea of horrors, and saw sunrise,
There, in the moon's vesicle, embarking on the chase
At 35 knots an hour.
And I saw women leaving Trianón, Eva, Ulises
With wrinkled skirts and disheveled necklines: a café con leche
And two donuts in Pitu Colomer so they could return
To the great current.
And I said: let's go, it's getting light, let morning wipe away what's left of 
 the nightmare.
And the poets climbed to the lookout on Pigeon Rock
And then descended again, but down the wall facing the sea,
Until they reached the comfort of a ledge
Like a Rock Bird nest
Where at the mercy of winds, but protected by stone,
They kissed, caressed disheveled locks,
Buried their faces in each other's necks
Laughing and panting.
And the older sister went out with me: we followed
The tanker trucks' route toward the town's geometric limit,
To where there exploded
Houses, flowers, pits opened yesterday by forgotten workers
And today converted to stock pots for a soup
More lasting than ourselves.
And in a bar beside the cliffs we said
Our names
And I realized the void could be
The size of a nut.
She'd just arrived from Madrid and in her exhaustion
Nightmares and ghosts were mounting. How
Old are you? she said laughing. 39, I responded.
You're old! I'm 25, she said.
And your name begins with L, I thought,
An L like a boomerang that comes back again and again
Even if it's thrown to Hell.

Translated from Spanish by Laura Healy