Silvina Ocampo
Two poems translated from Spanish by Suzanne Jill Levine
Armies of Darkness
I remember places where I’ve never been before.
At night, ships aren’t the only ones that embark—houses set sail, too. The creaking wood announces good or bad weather. And if we don’t fall asleep right away, we can get seasick.
•
Even since I was a child I could see in the total darkness of a room. When I am trying to fall asleep, a swift army in red and blue marches toward me until it fades away—and then I find it in another dark corner, where it marches toward me again. You’ll say that this army might be a field of hyacinth flowers as, after all, they are red and blue. It could also be a game board with colorful pieces, but it never occurred to me that this could be anything other than an army of little soldiers dressed in red and blue who march in unison, like a single soldier. To me, that army was always the army of the night. Darkness doesn’t belong only to the night—this I know—but nevertheless I saw it mostly at night, which to me is a place, the most important place in the world. At the moment the night army appears, I ponder, remember, inventing images and ideas that I don’t recognize during the day. And this tiny idea of an army, this army of memories, of images in my mind, fights to survive and tries to kill me because even though its divisions can be meek like lambs or sweet like honey, other times they hiss or yell or come wielding knives and poisons; they take cover in the infinite unexplored labyrinths where I lose sight of them, only to find them again in the place where I am always waiting for them, in the dark.
•
I am less afraid of dying than of living: the former happens only once, the latter, no one knows how many times.
•
Sometimes I’m afraid of giving away exactly what I’m thinking when I am quiet—or of not being able to convey my thoughts when I distort them with words. To fill a notebook with thoughts (are they thoughts?) is like filling a glass of water for someone else to drink, but how will the water taste to that other person? Did they even ask me for it? Where will I find someone who is thirsty? Who will be pleased, even if the water in the glass is from a muddy river?
•
Today on the radio Borges said that he detests—and I’m not sure he used this word—luxury. He doesn’t realize that literature, and art in general, is a luxury.
•
Jean Piaget cites in one of his books a conversation he had with his daughter when she was six years old:
“It is my mouth that gives me ideas.” “How so?”
“When I speak, my mouth helps me to think.”
“But don’t animals think?”
“No. Only parrots think a little, because they talk a little.”
This child was very wise. Something similar happens when you write. Words are what prompt ideas; words give form to ideas.
FIN
Aphorisms from Written in the Sand
—The best of life was always first a memory, which is why we don’t know when it began.
—I know people who, when they hear certain musical works they know by heart, are so moved that while they listen, they sing or whistle other music.
—We love other people when we really love someone in particular.
—We love in someone all the others if someone loves us. We forget all the others in someone if no one loves us.
—When you loved me, everyone began to love me. It was overwhelming. Everyone stopped loving me when you stopped loving me. It was overwhelming.
—How passionately those who loved stop loving.
—Desperation is a way to be less sad.
—Sometimes a human being who resembles an animal seems more human than the others, in the same way that an animal that seems human seems more animal than the others.
—When we read, many people treat us as if we were ill or very sad. Or they give us a fan that they could borrow from us from time to time.
—Living steals away our time to do something better.
—You’ll never become what you hoped because, upon becoming it, what you hoped to be turns into something else.
—Sometimes we like the friends that make us be charming better than those who charm us.
—If we didn’t get so used to things, perhaps we wouldn’t lose them so quickly.
—The worst thing about pain is to feel that it is killing us invisibly and that we die after having suffered it, without any glory, apparently from other causes.
—We live as if we had only one day to live, without any time to waste time, which we regret. We live as if we had all the time in the world to live, wasting time, which we regret.
—The only thing we know is what surprises us the most: that everything happens as if it inherently had not happened.
—Anything that doesn’t exist and has a name ends up existing.
—However, anything that exists and doesn’t have a name ends up not existing.