M Train and 100 lines
A poem for Roberto Bolano's birthday
Hecatomb
-for Roberto Bolano
You spoke of a spiritual hecatomb
The sacrifice of one hundred oxen
Offered to the Oracle
The God of truth
Poetry and music
You spoke of a song
The children’s crusade
Death and the mountain
Helicoidally sliced
Now we the worthless
Unsolicited revelators
Cash in our chips
And speak of this
Infiltration
Canonization
Apocalyptic celebration
We spit seed wash hands
Sprinkle barley meal pray
Arrange the Holy Hecatomb
Around the alter of your tome
The world that is all worlds
The broken lyre of Apollo
And slaughter’s curving saw
A hundred oxen in your name
Though not butchered all at once
Methodically three-minute intervals
A finale of one hundred fireworks
Slowed down shot off one at a time
So the spectators astonished mouth
Remains open for as long as it takes
As for the oxen figure 3 x 100
A rite of three hundred minutes
Trumping the Greeks
In the precinct of the Muse
These oxen are birds
Long legged grey as elephants
With sad spasmodic gestures
Each a poem spread eagle
With a multicolored skirt
Hiked over the face
Wrapped in wings
Of soulless laughter
These oxen are babes
Wallowing in the dust
Pining the woodcutter
Whose axe was alive
Their tears evaporate
Like sweat on the back
Of the neck of a laborer
From the southern border
Where there are no borders
Where bards and assassins
Scrape encrypted soles
Of incriminating shoes
And crumbling hearts
Write of your St. Teresa
A city shaped like a dress
Pierced at the breast
Dripping wands of blood
A retablo of sacred laundry
White limbs white feet
Skipping indiscreet
White flame white meat
Quivering upon a spit
Thighbone swaddled
We offer their eyes
Orb of incessant sight
Strung as a menagerie
About a giant’s throat
Pale hide pale horn
The lowing of oxen
Sounding through time
We are no longer slaves
We are his proud head
Bursting like a bubble
In a golden syringe
We are oxen of the sun
Tossing burning shirts
Upon the gravest course
Barely rehearsed
A poet’s coat is skin
With pockets of chasm
Lined in Iambic verse
His knife is a toy
Spiraling the universe
Humming as it goes
A song of perpetual life
A hundred laurel wreaths
Float your life-blood pond
Flies in the face of love
Rise through the center
Dance upon the water
A slow tempo dance
Quaking the earth
With ecstatic fury
Dear Patti,
I have read your Hecatomb for Bolaño out loud six times now. What a gift, and especially because M Train and 2666 are among my favorite books. It’s so exciting experiencing you in dialogue with him through your Hecatomb. It’s complex and I’m now deep into tracing the filaments between the book and your Hecatomb. They’re rich and complex.
I did not count the lines because I’m not good at things like that. I’m hoping that someone in this community has already counted the lines and I’ll see in the comments what they are.
Thank you so much for sharing this and for bringing attention to Bolaño, who was such a genius. I can’t remember who, in reviewing 2666, observed that Bolaño used the very non-fiction vehicle of a forensic report to describe the imaginary and, in so doing, aimed to create a third space where the real and the make believe meet. I’m sorry I can’t recall who expressed that (or in what publication) because it rang absolutely true to me.
I am so grateful that we are still in The Coral Sea. It is where I am, by necessity, and it means so much to have everyone here for company.
Again, I want to express my gratitude for this space in which to take refuge and gain strength to face all that is happening.
With gratitude and this, from “2666,” brilliantly translated by Natasha Wimmer (who also translated “The Savage Detectives”):
“The truth is we never stop being children, terrible children covered in sores and knotty veins and tumors and age spots, but ultimately children, in other words we never stop clinging to life because we are life.”
As ever,
Robin
Hi Patti, I was waiting in anticipation to hear you read the poem to Roberto. I will patiently wait for when that occasion will happen. Lots of love XXXGerard.