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Marco Martos

Perpetual Check

Translated by Michael L. Smith

To Jose Ruiz Rosas

In the silence of a room with squares
Runs a dagger along a black diagonal
The eye behind the grid imagines
That the world exists out there in the street
Where a slow time cures
Between hands of cards and their trick.
Maelstrom brings the calendar: Goths and Peruvians,
Martial trumpets blaring at full blast:
It is Junin, it is the 6th of August '24,
Now this man lives, now he imagines
he is Isidoro Suarez, courageous, and exhorts.
Smiling the Bishop Berkley digresses in this fashion:
Those that play cards in the street
Or eagerly confront Filidor
Or get lost in the labyrinths that nobody has invested,
Or mumble sounds in Aramaic
Or believe that nothing is infinite
Or many numbers are nothingness,
The wrought-iron gate foreshadows
The eye of Borges that invents them.
And the Bishop who feels Borges seeing so much
Stops his hand surprised at what he has written:
In the silence of a room with squares
Runs a dagger along a black diagonal
The eye behind the grid images
That the world exists out there in the street
Where a slow time cures
Between hands of cards and their trick.
Maelstrom brings the calendar: Goths and Peruvians,
Martial trumpets blaring at full blast:
It is Junin, it is the 6th of August '24,
Now this man lives, now he imagines
he is Isidoro Suarez, courageous, and exhorts:
Check. Check. Check. Check. Check.