THE DEER AND THE ARMOUR Poem by Orietta Lozano

I am the red and dirty
war she said,
the boiling cauldron,
sadness, the desolate one,
the one of ashes and ruin,
the one who comes with the dead flock
and rests in the garden
of the sad pins.
I am the one who plucks the solitary lyre
in cathedrals and sepulchres,
I dance in the horizon amid the dead
leaving on their lips
the kiss of nettles and of sulphur.
I howl when someone cries . . .
But when I look behind many times
I tremble on remembering you so clean,
so afflicted, so naked.

I am him. The world, the great one,
the silent one, the ripped-apart.
On the paths of the high edges
looking down on the abysses,
I moan for the red one, the one without water or fish,
the one gone astray.
I summon the thirsty light of a gust of wind,
the conspiring weapon,
the lighted furnace,
the axe of torture, the chain.
Come, come near
the rampart, the shuddering tower
as far as the agonizing torch
and the dark and deep fire
beating its wings like a raven.
We are the menaced, haughty,
unexpected, arrogant world.
After the sudden bell
announcing the resurgence
of fire and the uproar,
we rush with the curved sword
and we touch the crimson
latch in the whispers of agony,
we shuffle the cards
looking for the head of the hanged one,
the lover's amulet,
the crystal of an unexpected ace.
Hail to the man,
the butterfly and the serpent,
the mythic oil, ebony and grapes,
the ever changing wind
and the mysterious descent of the escarpments,
the gardens and the gallop scattering
prayers on the water of his steps.

I, the deranged one,
the executor of the night splinters
with my breast of sombre milk
I suckle the scales of the shaded valleys,
the machine of war
that severs
the sweet neck of rivers
and the aqueducts of eternal insomnia,
the chiaroscuro of basements,
walls,
arid markets.
I silently penetrate
and I yell through the holes,
I do not pursue anything
and I annihilate everything.
The immense work
is always about to be finished,
man has chosen me
as a future light
and I betray, I shatter,
I snort and roar.
With the light of a rigid
and lethal razor
I deface memory
and I take up residence
in the blind eye of the times.

I am the world, the divided one,
the fragmented one, the diverted one.
The atrocious plague with its head
of a thousand Medusa serpents
roars, rolls, and its body of leprosy
rots in the secret grove
where the chosen tree spreads its seed,
the bond of the waters,
the vertigo of the tribes and hives.
Hail to the man, the pyramid and the papyrus,
the silver line of the desert and the metropolis,
the light of the firefly and the light of writing,
the wood of the deer,
the arms of dawn,
the caverns where roots
and winds lodge.

I am the millenial one, the deluded one,
the one that awakens and roars
about the spell of the fountains
about the sleeping city
and the sleeping seas.
I am endowed with the remainders
of fire and metal,
with the steel blade and the armour,
with the cold of barbed wire
and putrid water,
under the rings of gusts of wind
and the frenzied cries of the sirens,
with eyes without pupil,
with the hermetic prayer
I avidly force my way
and make my nest
on abysses of ash,
and after the unbearable hunt
I suffer the mourning of the mute birds
and dead flowers,
the dryness of the drought
and the lament of tinplate,
the crushed moss
in the tears of the face.
Do not abandon me in this arid valley
where I have torn out my eyes,
guide me to the strayed green trails,
to the spirit of wheat and of the fig tree,
to the sweet swan and its solitary singing.