Great Throughts Treasury

"In poetry everything is permitted. With only one condition, of course: you must improve upon the blank page."

"Truth, like beauty, is neither created nor lost."

"A poem should improve on the blank page."

"Inside the cage there is food. Not a lot, but some. Outside there are only vast expanses of liberty."

"During that time I kept out of circumstances that were too full of mystery As people with stomach ailments avoid heavy meals, I preferred to stay at home inquiring into certain questions Concerning the propagation of spiders, To which end I would shut myself up in the garden And not show myself in public until late at night; Or else, in shirt-sleeves, defiant, I would hurl angry glances at the moon, Trying to get rid of those bilious fancies That cling like polyps to the human soul. When I was alone I was completely self-possessed, I went back and forth fully conscious of my actions Or I would stretch out among the planks of the cellar And dream, think up ways and means, resolve little emergency problems. It was at that moment that i put into practice my famous method for interpreting dreams Which consists in doing violence to oneself and then imagining what one would like, Conjuring up scenes that I had worked our beforehand with the help of powers from other worlds. In this manner I was able to obtain priceless information Concerning a string of anxieties that afflict our being: Foreign travel, erotic disorders, religious complexes. But all precautions were inadequate, Because, for reasons hard to set forth, I began sliding automatically down a sort of inclined plane. My soul lost altitude like a punctured balloon, The instinct of self-preservation stopped functioning And, deprived of my most essential prejudices, I fell unavoidably into the telephone trap Which sucks in everything around it, like a vacuum, And with trembling hands I dialed that accursed number Which even now I repeat automatically in my sleep. Uncertainty and misery filled the seconds that followed, While I, like a skeleton standing before that table from hell Covered with yellow cretonne, Waited for an answer from the other end of the world, The other half of my being, imprisoned in a pit. Those intermittent telephone noises Worked on me like a dentist's drill, They sank into my soul like needles shot from the sky Until, when the moment itself arrived, I started to sweat and to stammer feverishly, My tongue like a veal steak Obtruded between my being and her who was listening, Like those black curtains that separate us from the dead. I never wanted to conduct those over-intimate conversations Which I myself provoked, just the same, in my stupid way, My voice thick with desire, and electrically charged. Hearing myself called by my first name In that tone of forced familiarity Filled me with a vague discomfort, With anguished localized disturbances which I contrived to keep in check With a hurried system of questions and answers Which roused in her a state of pseudo-erotic effervescence That eventually affected me as well With a feeling of doom. Then I'd make myself laugh and as a result fall into a state of mental prostration. These ridiculous little chats went on for hours Until the lady who ran the pension appeared behind the screen Brusquely breaking off our stupid idyll. Those contortions of a petitioner at the gates of heaven And those catastrophes which so wore down my spirit Did not stop altogether when I hung up For usually we had agreed To meet next day in a soda fountain Or at the door of a church whose name I prefer to forget. "

"Before I go I’m supposed to get a last wish: Generous reader burn this book It’s not at all what I wanted to say Though it was written in blood It’s not what I wanted to say. No lot could be sadder than mine I was defeated by my own shadow: My words took vengeance on me. Forgive me, reader, good reader If I cannot leave you With a warm embrace, I leave you With a forced and sad smile. Maybe that’s all I am But listen to my last word: I take back everything I’ve said. With the greatest bitterness in the world I take back everything I've said. "

"Write as you will In whatever style you like Too much blood has run under the bridge To go on believing That only one road is right. In poetry everything is permitted. With only this condition of course, You have to improve the blank page."

"Whether we like it or not, We have only three choices: Yesterday, today and tomorrow. And not even three Because as the philosopher says Yesterday is yesterday It belongs to us only in memory: From the rose already plucked No more petals can be drawn. The cards to play Are only two: The present and the future. And there aren't even two Because it's a known fact The present doesn't exist Except as it edges past And is consumed..., like youth. In the end We are only left with tomorrow. I raise my glass To the day that never arrives. But that is all we have at our disposal. "

"First condition of every masterpiece unnoticed."

"For what we were born as men. If we are given a death of animals!"

"Good News: the land is recovered in a million years. We who disappear."

"Gravedigger, tell me the truth. Surely there must be some tribunal Or are the worms our judges?"

"He who does the dishes have to be an educated person, otherwise they are worse than before."

"I do not ask bread, roof, no shelter, we settle for excellence some air."

"I ask you to give me the Nobel for humanitarian reasons."

"I do not know if you understand me. What I mean is something else."

"I do not see what all the fuss: makes me well the smog."

"I support everything that is made in favor or against Rafael Gu¡¤ez, former first figure of the symphony orchestra."

"Impossible to get rid of the horns, only requirement to be married."

"I give clinched the twentieth century. I inaugurated the twenty-first century."

"I'm sure my legs shake, I dream that your teeth fall and I'm late for a funeral."

"I wish to make a noise with my feet. I want my soul to find its proper body."

"Left and right united will never be defeated."

"Lamb of God who wash the sins of the world, tell me how many apples are in the earthly paradise."

"The man who cannot drink his bloody baby cannot be, I think, a Christian from good stock."

"Lift the bread rise further increase of bread."

"Marxist? ... No, atheist, thank God."

"Tell me what are for you the 10 most beautiful words in the Spanish language and tell you who you are."

"Thought dies in the mouth."

"Thought is not born in the mouth, born in the heart of the heart."

"Until when are scrubbing hookah, I am not right nor left. I just break up with everything."

"The reality tends to disappear."

"There are two loaves. You eat two. I none. Consumption: bread per person."

"USA, where freedom is a statue."

"We believe we are home and the truth is that we are just scenery."

"We do not let dust in the eyes: the car is a wheelchair."

"Well, now who will free us from our liberators?."