Francisco Goya y Lucientes,
I dedicate this paper swallow
to you and fly it from the balcony
of San Antonio de la Florida past
the empty chapels of the Four Doctors
of the Church. My praying hands
are fish fins again, one eye a lump of tar,
the other hard blood, my flapping lids
sewed down to my cheekbones.
Time, the invisible snake,
keeps its head and fangs deep
in the vagina of space.
Reason blinded me, banished me.
I fight the liar in me, selective desire,
my calling nightmares ‘dreamless sleep.'
Blind, coño, I made a musical watch,
the image of Don Quixote points the hours,
Sancho the minute hand.
I hear the right time when
I listen to my watch play church bells.
Mystery this, mystery that.
I have another watch—wolves howling
and dogs barking. Now the invisible
snake swims in the Ebro.
I look out of my window to see time
as if it were not in my mouth
and all my other two-timing orifices.
Don Francisco, I swear at the feet
of the dead who maim me and
the living who heal me that the least sound,
a page turning, whips me.
I owe my blindness, this paper swallow,
to you, because I lived most of my life,
a marrano, in your deaf house.
I pull open one of my eyes like the jaws of a beast.