In this excerpt from the poetry collection *El otro lado, la otra orilla* by Argentine poet Ernesto F. Iancilevich, we see, like the empire of man, the immense desire to reveal, in their entirety, the events and mysteries of being. With clear, subtle, and simple language, the poet presents his insights to us.
His poetry, his song, his voice: like a mortal standing before a mirror, he envelops us in the romantic candor of the word; he ignites his hell to set the sky ablaze. Without a doubt, Iancilevich is a quintessential example of the new Argentine poetry that emerged in the 1970s and has endured, unscathed and unadulterated, into the poetic modernity of our times. Listen, immerse yourselves in his verses. Feel them.
A fine line that my hand draws
A fine line that my hand draws
-“pure destiny of your body,”-,
you illuminate desire,
if the limit is knowing oneself
a man, not a series of downpours.
You draw with your breasts
tree territory,
the distance as the crow flies,
a moment of heaven.
Body in the air,
spirit on earth,
metal in the fire,
You are like pure water:
rain from the being that waters
and creates and transforms.
At some point in our lives
At some point in our lives,
Our skin speaks to us
without us ever really knowing
What he says or doesn't say—where is the line?
where she decides which voice we hear.
Small body size
-image of the void-,
after many decades of living our lives,
now thinner, in deep communion,
The depths yearn for the open—is it perhaps the sky?
Like a knight upholding his faith,
We return to the topic of death,
Easter, a celebration of life
and yet it hurts;
At the end of the day,
we confess, we ask
-signs of the same thing that is not understood,
relentless, mysterious—:
Ashes of Truth, are you there?
Swarm of Lucidity
A Swarm of Lucidity,
In your weaving, you invent nothing:
you bring darkness to life inside,
holding the spotlight on the spider loom
when you approach the spell in the center.
A man doesn't recognize himself in the mirror
A man doesn't recognize himself in the mirror.
Look—a beast, a shadow, the room
without a mirror, and turns around,
and the metal of the stone blazes in his eyes,
and it burns with a bright red and blue flame
and sometimes green
and then purple,
with a secret, pious fullness.
A Man in the Mirror
ignite his hell
to brighten the sky.
A line is a drawing that explains
A line is a drawing that explains
the barrier of silence on the outskirts.
Something holds her and embraces her,
He lets go of it and shoots it,
the enigma of love, at the heart of which
It's another mystery.
But nothing explains the emptiness
beyond the margins,
except for the void itself,
open to himself,
a metaphor that names
in being nothingness
and everything in the void.
A line, let's say, like a solid line
in the discourse based on his own
variation: the two that is three,
the three that is four, the infinite
a unit that starts its scale with zero.
That is why a paradox explains the world:
Every addition is a subtraction,
and we are both the big and the small
of a point that moves forward or backward.
On the beach thirsty for bodies
On the beach thirsting for bodies,
regarding its loss,
something within us leans in another direction;
with barely wet feet
and bare-chested,
runs along the shore,
in the midnight sun.
Let go, then, my heart
when you feel like it's not there for you,
let it grow like an absence,
open in secret,
glowing in the dark,
more alive than all other presences,
Just let it go, my love, and don't ask.
Unless I believe in the poem
Unless I believe in the poem
presence to speak of emptiness.
Or a being that remains silent in speech
to inhabit the absence.
Either a metaphor or a disguise
the things people lie about
because I couldn't
in all honesty,
because I didn't know
to say "silence.".
Beyond language,
I write,
like someone who is dreaming or meditating,
like someone who is leaving and waiting.
The poem is born elsewhere.
The poet grows up on the other side.
