Keeping a record in Rotterdam

 

There's an intuitive search,

Singular

A kind of premonition

Of tribulation.

I'll say that sometimes

To avoid collapsing in the pursuit of perfection

Or pleasure

I make little notes

I keep track, a kind of record

I remember that as a girl I kept tree leaves

Among my books

Even clovers

They had to be small leaves, first and foremost, found on the ground

Never, ever, plucked from their stems.

They arrived yellow, until they turned brown

Until they faded and became dust

I follow a similar rhythm in the face of everyday events

Which I confront with a kind of stoicism

With my head held high

The feeling is as if I were being transported to the pyre

Or to the room where a large audience will be available while I'm injected with some substance

And I think of life before their anxious eyes

So insidious

So fragmented and singled out

For being a torpedo

For being naive

For not meeting anyone's expectations

For being a rebel without a cause

For writing erotic poems in honor of all those cretins I've adored in my bed

I could fill two rooms with 50 worthy representatives

My grandmother was only with one man who gave her six children

And he was her husband

Her granddaughter have had another form of freedom and another selection process

It's about not having been chosen.

*

Sometimes, when I feel the fear of disappearing from this world overnight

Although in these last few months

I've simply allowed life to amaze or amuse me.

Sometimes, I just feel myself fading away before its gaze.

Perhaps that was a feeling I never found again among the pages of books.

Because they are made of the same stuff as us, humans

They change color, until they become dust.

Sometimes, too, I've felt held by the setting sun and have altered my routes

Just to follow its light, to observe it head-on, until it surrenders on the horizon.

My friends always insist that I write about love.

They want poetry to explain something they hold in their grasp

And it goes unnoticed.

They want to know what love is, and I answer, publicly,

As a public service

Given my well-known work in defending words that serve no moral or religious function or authority.

Love happens when you're not looking for it

When suddenly, everyone you meet on the street

Has his face.

The gentleman smoking a cigar on the corner

The one collecting empty beer cans on Witte de Withstraat

Add that street name to your search criteria when you visit Rotterdam

He almost ran me over on his bicycle, a blond, white, blue-eyed man.

Continuing on his way.

In minutes, every profession has paraded before my eyes

And now, he's a musician, a waiter, a fruit vendor.

He's a Tramp driver 

He's a foreigner and a local

He's everyone and no one at the same time

If you ask me then what love is, my lifelong friends.

There are no answers to mark with an X

Nor are there wrong answers, although there are mistakes that are paid for with life itself

Perhaps love is that capacity to gain everything and lose it all.

In a second.

And maybe, to try again.

Karim Quiroga