So, Cecilia Vicuña, when she was young,
some of these poems come out of the Stupid Diary.
It was like this 2000-page diary that she kept.
It was called Diario Estupido.
[LAUGHTER]
And some of them have all of these sort
of aphoristic writing.
So we picked some of the fragments
from this 2000-page document and translated it.
And it's called Mondo, Excerpts From The Stupid Diary.
And this is also from this same period from the '60s.
Poetry is the means by which unreality invites reality
to switch sides.
Sex is God's gaze, daylight's key.
Who knows of light, the great luminous coitus?
Suffering and happiness are indistinguishable to the soul
who laughs at it all.
In future luminosity, we will lack contingency.
The sea is the sky of another sky.
We must lure the future and place it between our thighs
as a done deal.
An instantaneous life not a shitty one.
Sex is incorruptible.
Between gap of thigh and sliver of night, Uxmal.
Say of them, oh, Black vagina, oh, red
vagina, oh, vagina of gold, legs of ivory, and nothing more.
Thoughts are digested like grain.
Nutrients equally precious.
People without food but with ideas
have survived for centuries, but well-fed people without ideas
waste away in oblivion.
I am what is on the verge of becoming
what rises in smoke signals.
I carry on my back those who weep over my lost Incahuasi.
My language is restrained, elegant and delicate
like clouds at dawn.
My language is low class like the prostitute I intimately am.