^{translated from the Spanish by Yvette Siegert}

I was born on a day
when God was sick.

They all know I exist,
that I’m evil, but they do not know
about December of that January.
For I was born on a day
when God was sick.

There is a void
in my metaphysical state
that no one is likely to feel:
a cloister of silence
that spoke like a flowering fire.

I was born on a day
when God was sick.

Brother, listen, listen. . . 
That’s fine. Do not let me leave
without taking the Decembers,
without discarding the Januaries.
For I was born on a day
when God was sick.

They all know I exist,
that I chew . . . but they do not know
why, in my verses, the scouring
winds unravel from the Sphinx,
busybody of the Desert,
to screech, off-key,
a casket’s dark displeasure.

They all know. . . but they do not know
that the Light is consumptive
while the Shadow is corpulent.
They do not know how Mystery can synthesize. . . 
It is the sad and musical hunchback
denouncing, from a distance,
the passing of noon from the limits to the Limits.

I was born on a day
when God was sick, and
gravely so.

Espergesia

Yo nací un día
que Dios estuvo enfermo.

Todos saben que vivo,
que soy malo; y no saben
del diciembre de ese enero.
Pues yo nací un día
que Dios estuvo enfermo.

Hay un vacío
en mi aire metafísico
que nadie ha de palpar:
el claustro de un silencio
que habló a flor de fuego.

Yo nací un día
que Dios estuvo enfermo.

Hermano, escucha, escucha. . . 
Bueno. Y que no me vaya
sin llevar diciembres,
sin dejar eneros.
Pues yo nací un día
que Dios estuvo enfermo.

Todos saben que vivo,
que mastico. . . Y no saben
por qué en mi verso chirrian,
oscuro sinsabor de féretro,
luyidos vientos
desenroscados de la Esfinge
preguntona del Desierto.

Todos saben . . . Y no saben
que la Luz es tísica,
y la Sombra gorda. . . 
Y no saben que el Misterio sintetiza. . . 
que él es la joroba
musical y triste que a distancia denuncia
el paso meridian de las lindes a las Lindes.

Yo nací un día
que Dios estuvo enfermo,
grave.

Ignoring the doctor’s red call
                    I swam in the molasses-thick swamp
          of my indulgence, allowed the sugar to ruin

the picnic. The lawn beneath me humming
                    with little invaders.
          There are conditions if one insists

on knowing the secrets of my blood.
                    I know it’s hard to gaze at the night sky
          speckled white & not wish upon

the dead light, but I ask only for your laughter.
                    I ask for all the ways I can remain
          whole & not a vision with missing limbs.

Look at the trees blistering with sap. Goddamnit
                    look at me! Look at me in the old way
          in this new light.

Once I loved a boy, who feared, so much
                    his own sickness
          I never confessed to him my own.

Afraid he would turn, with his worry, my smile
                    into a knife—into a scythe
          covered in ants.