Séamas Carraher-

THE

FISH

OF

NOBODIES

"Ignoro lo que seré del enfermo esta mujer, que le besa

y no puede sanarle con el beso, le mira y no puede sanarle

con los ojos, le habla y no puede sanarle con el verbo?"

"I don't know who this woman is to this sick man, for she

kisses him and can't heal him with her kiss, she looks at him

and can't heal him with her eyes, she talks to him and can't

heal him with her words?"

César Vallejo 'Las ventanas se han estremecido' (1923(?)-1937)

  1

My cousin, this fish with wings,

this two-time fish of the lobotomies,

(this dumbdrughappy talking-fish): 

what's this, it says

at the entrance, at the collision

and conjunction of the exits

- a nobody!

This sneering fish with wings

sharpening on politics,

fish of my ungodly soul,

this sea filled with my silence!

Here is my answer.

First i pick up the ice hammer.

i shatter the glass of my many faces

hanging from the unfurled street

like a tree of lost lives.

Next i close all the books

for i see only my selves

(these workers endlessly creating their own industry)

in their dead.

And so the dead live on

eating away at my own life:

this life without wings,

this life, sadly, brother, with no friends.

This is my answer

twisted into ribs, 

the caress of the machete in my many faces,

on garbage day, at the sad end of town,

at the most sorrowful end of this time of sighs.

II

 My fish, this once and future

child of the wings,

cries deeply and silently in need:

for i have shouldered him not an inch,

nor could i offer him one piece of bread to eat

but my own ugly face.

Always why, fish!  Always why, human!

O my brother.

So still he asks and asks and the stars

come out and the stars fall

and no one writes of this:

this flesh of my winglessness

their murderous torture of the nobodies

in the name of democracy.

III

In this way the walls scratch my skin.

And the day in its cardboard shapes

is beneath my contempt.

I say, before this question

- another one!

How come we are here at all?

For i've proven in your science of the losses,

(this anarchy of my aches)

in the whispering of winds whistling through my bones

how all the world fills with all these countless ones

not buried in books,

not carved on stone,

all the nameless ones i breathe

with this emptiness i carry

instead of a name.

All those, brother, don't hang from the street

like lives lost hanging from a tree.

Even though, they have eaten and eaten

and are never full.

Eat and eat, voracious feeding from our life,

from my life, and yours too,

sister of solitude,

(saintly sister of my unequal halves,

this fraction that will never be a whole:

you, that falls between my love and the abyss!)

O you, who i long to hold in this lost world

sinking between our sighs.

IV

O how they eat, these unearthly ghosts!

But what’s it like? like a child,

this incessant instant of the fishes,

with an endless question in its genes,

and all our snakelike selves,

and watch: these dreams i spit in daytime

between car exhausts

and the dawn:

listen to the wind scream.

Listen to all the cancers groan.

Listen to the emptying of streets!

How the air is heavy with cigarette smoke

and it is hard to breathe

among dead men and

the dust of dead men

- this single meal of many mouths.

V

Then with my glass skulls

shelled and washed with rain 100% proof

i am as empty 'til they use me

as horse or hand or mouth

in the forgotten morning

listening to their words

without mercy,

arms in splints! and the world,

only this pretty thing

balancing

on its crutch of lies.

 

VI

For these aches speak

and my bones are already naked

and half in the grave already...

...how is there

this silence between our thighs?

isn't that why the words shudder?

the books tear themselves in two?

the walls shake with our trembling?

and time passes

never to return?

 

VII

And now, love, between you and me

there is this hollow sound

no one will

hold

breaking my chest in waves,

in lungs,

in mouthfulls not yet born.

In this way, fish,

we are risen from the sea each morning.

In this way, i am coming to understand

in the rootless tree of my legs

we are all nobody.

We are all, both you and me together,

we must be on the verge.

VIII

Now i understand

(between gasps like a landed fish)

why we fly earthwards

both flesh and spirit!

why the torture won't stop

why this shuddering

as i hold you endlessly

sings

like leaves softly

shaking the tree.

Séamas Carraher was born in Dublin, Ireland in 1956. He lives on the Ballyogan estate, in south County Dublin, at present. Recent publications include poems in Istanbul Literary Review and Pemmican. Previously his work has been published in Left Curve (No. 13, 14 & 20), Compages, Poetry Ireland Review, Anthology of Irish Poetry and the Irish Socialist (newspaper).