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An Obscure Meadow Lures Me

José Lezama Lima

1910 –

1976

An obscure meadow lures me,

her fast, close-fitting lawns

revolve in me, sleep on my balcony.

They rule her reaches, her indefinite

alabaster dome re-creates itself.

On the waters of a mirror,

the voice cut short crossing a hundred paths,

my memory prepares surprise:

fallow deer in the sky, dew, sudden flash.

Without hearing I’m called:

I slowly enter the meadow,

proudly consumed in a new labyrinth.

Illustrious remains:

a hundred heads, bugles, a thousand shows

baring their sky, their silent sunflower.

Strange the surprise in that sky

where unwillingly footfalls turn

and voices swell in its pregnant center.

An obscure meadow goes by.

Between the two, wind or thin paper,

the wind, the wounded wind of this death,

this magic death, one and dismissed.

A bird, another bird, no longer trembles.

Used with the permission of the University of California Press, from Selections: José Lezama Lima, edited by Ernesto Livon-Grosman, 2005; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.

José Lezama Lima

José Lezama Lima, a Cuban poet, essayist, and novelist, was born in Havana on December 19, 1910, to an upper-class family. His father, a military officer, died in 1919. After his death, he and his mother moved into his grandmother’s house. Lezama Lima was often ill during his childhood, particularly from asthma, and took solace in reading. His mother strongly influenced his cultural development. The pair remained close throughout Lezama Lima’s life and lived together until her death in 1964. Lezama Lima studied law in Havana in the early 1930s.

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Pavilion of Nothingness

I join the screw

posing questions in the wall,

a lackluster sound

color covered with a blanket.

But I falter and momentarily

blind, I can barely feel myself.

All at once, I call to mind,

with my fingernails I tunnel

a tokonoma in the wall.

I need a tiny hollow,

it’s there I go diminishing

to reappear anew,

to touch myself and set my forehead in its place.

A tiny hollow in the wall.

José Lezama Lima

2005

Anthony and Cleopatra

The galleys, arms

crossed over the serpent

and the turquoise eye stained

with saffron dust.

The silky waters

contemplate with silver eyes

the embroidery furrowed along the sails

of the Roman trireme,

with a voluptuousness sweetly

scratching the holes of the flute.

Light splinters when touched

by the prow and the seagull

trembles receiving the unexpected

thrust, that like a finger tickles

the solar breast feathers

interchanging the colors of a bonfire.

José Lezama Lima

2005

Mother

I saw the face of my mother again.

It was a night that seemed to have severed

night from sleep.

The night drew on or halted,

a cutting knife or a hurricane gust,

but the dream didn’t head for its night.

I felt as if everything weighed upward,

you spoke there, almost murmuring,

in the ear of some tiny crab,

alright, I know this because I saw her smile

that wanted to approach to offer me

the little creature,

to watch its amusing crawl

or to plunge it in hot flour.

José Lezama Lima

2005