1
– The poet is in danger of extinction –
said the man with the moustache.
–The poet is someone from another age
who wanders through the day saying things
nobody understands – said the woman.
–While your bricklayer falls off a building,
the poet calls to us in the dead
language of mankind –said he shopkeeper.
–The poet writes books nobody
wants to read or sell or publish–
said the Professor.
–We ought to form a society
to protect these poets
in danger of extinction– said the woman.
2
–Baudelaire never was that popular–
said the man with the moustache.
–Dante, after seven hundred years
hardly anybody reads him– said the woman.
–Gongora– after the revival and reappreaisal
is ignored all over again – said the Professor.
–What can we do so the public gets to know
poets better? – asked the shopkeeper.
–Nothing, absolutely nothing – said the poet.
–Didn’t they say this was the type of person
who was already in danger of extinction? –
asked the man with the moustache.
3
The poet said:
String moons
through the smoggy streets;
in the world of communication
reach out through the dead languages;
in a marketplace of goods
that are smelled, pawed over, eaten
or shelved for a thousand years,
touch the body of a woman who never was.
See, in front of my bedroom window
the poet, my double, dodge between the cars,
like an animal in danger of extinction.
Aridjis, Homero. "The Poet in Danger of Extinction." Trans. George McWhirter. Eyes to See Otherwise: Selected Poems = Ojos, de otro mirar. Eds. Betty Ferber and George McWhirter. New York: New Directions, 2002.