Apophasis

Do you pray to God when God sleeps?

There is nothing shameful in unheard wishes.

When He awakes

he goes about his old business,

ignoring what the fretful say.

Are you sorry for the things you promised in dreams?

For what you forgot to ask

when you heard the riddle for the first time?^[1]

When God is up at night, he counts you.

You step again and again from the last stone stair

onto the wet sidewalk where the men’s black hats hurry by.

God watches you.

Each time, you start down with a different foot,

Or hold your weight a different way.

Sometimes you look left.

Sometimes you are crying and your eyes are closed.^[2]

Is this the God you pray to?

When he cannot sleep,

he himself prays to the gears that turn the night.

When he cannot sleep,

he looks at the glass of milk your soul swims in

on a table at the far end of the room.^[3]

Do your words approach his infinite ear?

Why does the cat’s eye roll and roll,

insisting on the circle inside a saucer?

What comes after the last page in your book?^[4]

If you know the answer to these things, sew them up.

There is a place for them behind

the armoire, where the dark century

has done its mournful tidying up.^[5]

There is a place for them in the labored breathing of the shadow’s single lung,

or under a carpet whose corner has been turned up

to show how time bleaches each board alike.

1. -En una adivinanza cuyo tema es el ajedrez ¿cuál es la única adivinanza prohibida?
Reflexioné un momento y repuse:
-La palabra ajedrez.
- Jorge Luis Borges ↩

2. My curiosity was aroused by the idea of putting into motion some of the results I had obtained in still photography.
- Man Ray ↩

3. Late at night our hands stop working.
- Charles Simic ↩

4. Sin embargo, antes de llegar al verso final ya había comprendido que no saldría jamás de ese cuarto.
- Gabriel García Márquez ↩

5. The Bustle in a House
The Morning after Death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted opon Earth
- Emily Dickinson ↩