The Great Pit Poem by Roberto Bolaño

At three a.m. we passed
through the Great Pit
and our boat, which had always been creaky
withdrew instantly
into a dark fainthearted
silence
while we floated atop thousands and thousands of meters or horrors
That was all, I tell it as I lived it
the Great Pit
the darkness of three a.m.
enveloping the boat decked out profusely
in paper lanterns and floodlights
sailors and passengers
united
by youth and by fear
by the cold
all in the same hulk floating
above or below reality
a reality, how should I put it?
oblivious to our knowledge, our books
our history
a reality that called to mind
the final passion, the mystery of a surrealist poet
a minor poet
in Aldo Pellegrini's anthology, know
who I mean?
It doesn't matter
Though I've forgotten his name I'll never forget
his last adventure
Breton and his friends arrived at Marseille or Toulon
in '40 or '41
seeking a way to escape to the United States
He's there, with them and their suitcases, Pellegrini publishes his photo

a common face
a rather portly guy
with a desk clerk's eyes, not a surrealist's
though now all the surrealists, all the poets
have the eyes of desk clerks
in '41 that wasn't the case
Desnos, Artaud, Char
Tzara, Péret, Éluard were still alive
but our poet was a minor poet
and minor poets suffer like lab animals
and have the dry and evil eyes
of desk clerks
In short: some of them, like Breton, acquired the visa
and a boat ticket and were able to leave behind
Vichy France, others
like Tzara, couldn't go
Like a carpet in their midst
the unnamed poet
Bags packed to enter a dark destiny
obliquely different
from Tzara's destiny and Breton's: to put it simply
he disappeared
he left his hotel, wandered around the streets of the port
drank and watched the flow of people
and then he vanished
did the night swallow him?
did he commit suicide? did they kill him?
the only thing certain is his body never turned up
Let's suppose an underwater current grabbed him
at the Marseille Yacht Club
and dragged him far from his bags, his surrealist books
to the true depths
outside the Mediterranean
beyond the lights of Tangier
in the middle of the Atlantic

under tons and tons of water
where the only living things are blind fish
colorless fish
in a place where colors don't exist
only darkness
and life peculiar and impenetrable
as his disappearance without a note good-bye
without a body
facts that arouse the curiosity of Pellegrini
reader of crime novels and Latin American surrealist
but not that of Breton
who is occupied by
the literary apocalypse
A minor poet whose death is like the death
of Empedocles
or like an alien abduction
Let's suppose that was precisely what
he wished to fake or to depict
But the foul waters of the port of Marseille
are not a volcano
and sooner or later his body
even if securely fastened to a 50-pound stone
would have been found
In '40 or '41, despite appearances
there wasn't yet a perfect crime
And that's the story, the mysterious disappearance
of a minor poet
(was his name Gui? Gui Rosey?)
from the surrealist Parnassus
A poet dragged by the unknown currents of the sea
toward the Great Pit
the very one that stopped our hulk and our
young hearts, the grave
that feeds off poor retreating poets
and pure thoughts, the grave

that devours surrealists Belgian and Czech
English, Danish, Dutch
Spanish, and French, without
rest, innocently

Postscript: We were finally able to get away from those waters, but not from that seemingly endless night. Days later, at dawn, I had a revelation: the boat and the Pit were united by a perpendicular line and they'd never be separated.

Translated from Spanish by Laura Healy