What is this cloth, an immaculate garment?
Is it laced with Damascene silver, with Wootz steel?
Is it plumed with peacock feathers, with silphium stalks?
No, It is tailored with a holy mother's afflictions
Of tens and tens of years gathered in one harsh fabric.
Slowly, hear its rips.
Hear its unfastening stitches.
She had presented it to me as a largesse,
Something of a legacy
Forced upon me to preserve.
She said, Keep it white. Keep it white,
Even during a million Argentine nights
In the middle of the Pampas
Where I like to sit and have nothing.
Keep it white!
Keep it white, keep it white!
But it seems not that I can;
I am no big ball of lovely fire,
Only a spectacle of impure deliberation,
Like the other unwanted half of the ten virgins parable.
I am a seductive gigolo, an oversexed inferno
To suck, to pluck
The feathers out of this obligatory legacy,
And out of this immaculate garment.
