Landscape of a Vomiting Multitude

The fat lady came out first,tearing out roots and moistening drumskins.

The fat ladywho turns dying octopuses inside out.

The fat lady, the moon's antagonist,was running through the streets and deserted buildingsand leaving tiny skulls of pigeons in the cornersand stirring up the furies of the last centuries' feastsand summoning the demon of bread through the sky's clean-swept hillsand filtering a longing for light into subterranean tunnels.

The graveyards, yes the graveyardsand the sorrow of the kitchens buried in sand,the dead, pheasants and apples of another era,pushing it into our throat.

There were murmuring from the jungle of vomitwith the empty women, with hot wax children,with fermented trees and tireless waiterswho serve platters of salt beneath harps of saliva.

There's no other way, my son, vomit!

There's no other way.

It's not the vomit of hussars on the breasts of their whores,nor the vomit of cats that inadvertently swallowed frogs,but the dead who scratch with clay handson flint gates where clouds and desserts decay.

The fat lady came firstwith the crowds from the ships, taverns, and parks.

Vomit was delicately shaking its drumsamong a few little girls of bloodwho were begging the moon for protection.

Who could imagine my sadness?

The look on my face was mine, but now isn't me,the naked look on my face, trembling for alcoholand launching incredible shipsthrough the anemones of the piers.

I protect myself with this lookthat flows from waves where no dawn would go,

I, poet without arms, lostin the vomiting multitude,with no effusive horse to shearthe thick moss from my temples.

The fat lady went firstand the crowds kept looking for pharmacieswhere the bitter tropics could be found.

Only when a flag went up and the first dogs arriveddid the entire city rush to the railings of the boardwalk.