Roberto Bolao's LA UNIVERSIDAD DESCONOCIDA (THE UNKNOWN UNIVERSITY)

*
In lost cars, with two or three distant friends, we saw death up close. Drunk and dirty, upon awakening, in suburbs painted yellow, we saw la Pelona beneath the shadow of a stall. This is some kind of grief!, shouted my friend. We saw her disappear and appear like a Greek statue. We saw her stretch. But above all we saw her melt with the hills and the horizon.

* I saw her walking down the street. The wind passed above her: it moved the leaves on the trees and the hanging clothes, but her hair seemed like that of a statue. Down the street, with regular steps, in a straight line towards the blue of the intersection. Later I didnt see her. I closed my eyes and remembered a girl sprawled out on a mat in the corner of a dark room, like a garage Hello, I said, I just arrived and dont know anyone in this lovely town The wind banged the door, shook the windows: her shadow, like a spinning top, was lost in the intersection, imperturbable. Only then did I realize that I had arrived at the Ghost City. Frozen, I shut my eyes and saw her again Queen of the reflections. Queen of the descending streets * Death is an automobile with two or three distant friends. Faces I cant forget: cerulean, cold, at a pace that only belongs to dusk. Death is an automobile cruising the avenues of Mexico City uselessly searching for your house: a wake of carbon, a tail of carbon, some carbon fingers that sink in the darkness. Death are the lips of R.B. and L.J. on the back seat of a minibus: now I know that no one escapes these avenues. I leave it for you like collateral: the end of my childhood. *
IN SOME PLACE DRY AND ENORMOUS, 1949 You and me comfortably dressed observing the straight line while the clouds run in the sky like in the movie you sometimes dream of making You and me without kids observing the straight line between two yellows that were the yellow mass before and that well never know what the hell theyll become (nor does it matter!) You and me in a rented house

sitting together next to the window the truth you say is that I could cry all afternoon the truth is that Im not hungry and yes a little bit of fear of getting drunk again sitting together next to a straight window, no? while at our backs the birds jump from branch to branch and the light from the kitchen blinks You and me in a bed, there we are! observing the white walls two profiles that continue helped by the light of the street and by the light of our cold hearts that refuse to die.

* Now you stroll alone along the wharfs of Barcelona. You smoke a black cigarette and for a moment think it would be good if it rained. The gods dont grant you money but yes strange whims Look up: its raining. *
YOUR DISTANT HEART I dont feel safe Anywhere. The adventure does not end. Your eyes shine in all the corners. I dont feel safe In words Or money Or mirrors. The adventure will never end And your eyes search for me. He who loses a lover once, will always lose her again. Anyone in whose proximities occurred a murder, should always be prepared for another murder. HANS HENNY JAHNN I said that I would never forget you. Now Im in La Fronda again and the wind and the poplars and the lawn that grows and the flowers between the grass only remember a boy who spoke with No One.

TU LEJANO CORAZN No me siento seguro En ninguna parte. La aventura no termina. Tus ojos brillan en todos los rincones. No me siento seguro En las palabras Ni en el dinero Ni en los espejos. La aventura no termina jams Y tus ojos me buscan. El que pierda una vez a su amada siempre volver a perderla. Aquel en cuyas proximidades ocurri una vez un asesinato, siempre debera estar preparado para un nuevo asesinato. HANS HENNY JAHNN Dije que jams te olvidara. Ahora estoy en La Fronda nuevamente y el viento y los lamos y el pasto que crece y las flores entre la hierba slo recuerdan a un muchacho que hablaba con Nadie.

* No one sends you letters now Under the lighthouse at dusk Lips chapped by the wind Towards the East they make the revolution A cat sleeps in your arms Sometimes you are immensely happy. Nadie te manda cartas ahora Debajo del faro en el atardecer Los labios partidos por el viento Hacia el Este hacen la revolucin Un gato duerme entre tus brazos A veces eres inmensamente feliz.

Death is an automobile with two or three distant friends La muerte es un automvil con dos o tres amigos lejanos * Shady hills beyond your dreams. The castles that the vagabond dreams. To die at the end of any day. Impossible to escape the violence. Impossible to think about another thing. Skinny gentlemen praise poetry and weapons. Castles and birds from another imagination. That which is still unformed will protect me.

Colinas sombreadas ms all de tus sueos Los castillos que suea el vagabundo. Morir al final de un da cualquiera. Imposible escapar la violencia. Imposible pensar en otra cosa. Flacos seores alaban poesa y armas. Castillos y pjaros de otra imaginacin. Lo que an no tiene forma me proteger. * Dont listen to the voices of dead friends, Gaspar. Dont listen to the voices of the unknown who died During the fast dusks of foreign cities. No escuches las voces de los amigos muertos, Gaspar. No escuches las voces de los desconocidos que murieron En veloces atardeceres de ciudades extranjeras *

its nice to be able to grasp something simple and real like missing someone FRANK OHARA I listen to Barney Kessel and smoke smoke smoke and drink tea and try to prepare some toast with butter and jam but I discover I dont have bread and its already twelve thirty at night and the only thing there is to eat is a bottle half full with chicken stock bought in the morning and five eggs and a little muscatel and Barney Kessel plays the guitar cornered between the sword and an open socket I think Ill make consomm and after Ill get in bed to reread The Invention of Morel and think about a blond girl until I fall asleep and begin to dream. * THE ROBOT I remember that Plato was warning me and I didnt pay attention. Now Im in the discotheque of death and theres nothing I can do: the space is a paradox. Nothing can happen here and yet here I am. Barely a robot with an unspecified mission. A work of eternal art.

EL ROBOT Recuerdo que Platn me lo deca y no prest atencin. Ahora estoy en la discoteca de la muerte y no hay nada que pueda hacer: el espacio es una paradoja. Aqu no puede pasar nada y sin embargo estoy yo.

Apenas un robot con una misin sin especificar. Una obra de arte eternal. SPRING OF 1980. FOR RANDY WESTON The mystery of love is always the mystery of love and now its twelve in the afternoon and Im having a glass of tea for breakfast as the rain slides down the white pillars of the bridge. PRIMAVERA DE 1980. PARA RANDY WESTON El misterio del amor siempre es el misterio del amor y ahora son las doce del da y estoy desayunando un vaso de t mientras la lluvia se desliza por los pilares blancos del puente. * A FLY EMBEDDED IN A FLY A THOUGHT EMBEDDED IN A THOUGHT AND MARIO SANTIAGO EMBEDDED IN MARIO SANTIAGO How does it feel, tell me how does it feel when the birds are lost in red and youre leaning on a wall, unstitched pants and messy hair as if you had just killed a president. How does it feel in the almost red hour, in the hour of agit-prop, boots that sink in the snow of an avenue where no one knows you. Forked tongue of knowing how to be alone and images that destiny (so pleasant) drags beyond the hills. Tell me how it feels and what color your remarkable eyes have acquired. * CHINESE POET IN BARCELONA A Chinese poet thinks about a word without coming to touch it, without coming to observe it, without coming to represent it. Behind the poet there are yellow and dry mountains swept by

the wind, occasional rains, cheap restaurants, white clouds that fragment. DAWN Believe me, Im in the center of my room waiting for it to rain. Im alone. I dont care if I finish my poem or not. I wait for the rain, drinking coffee and watching through the window a beautiful landscape of backyards, with quiet and hanging clothes, silent marble clothes in the city, where the wind doesnt exist and in the distance only the buzzing of a color television can be heard, observed by a family who also, at this hour, drinks coffee gathered around a table: believe me: the yellow plastic tables unfold until the horizon and even further: towards the suburbs where they construct apartment buildings, and a 16 year old boy sitting on red bricks contemplates the movement of the machines. The sky in the hour of the boy is an enormous hollow screw that the breeze plays with. And the boy plays with ideas. With ideas and with arrested scenes. The immobility is a transparent and hard mist that comes out of his eyes. Believe me: it is not love that will come, but beauty with its cloak of dead daybreaks.

AMANECER Creme, estoy en el centro de mi habitacin esperando que llueva. Estoy solo. No me importa terminar o no mi poema. Espero la lluvia, tomando caf y mirando por la ventana un bello paisaje de patios interiores, con ropas colgadas y quietas, silenciosas ropas de mrmol en la ciudad, donde no existe el viento y a lo lejos slo se escucha el zumbido de una televisin de colores, observada por una familia que tambin, a esta hora, toma caf reunida alrededor de una mesa: creme: las mesas de plstico amarillo se desdoblan hasta la lnea del horizonte y ms all: hacia los suburbios donde construyen edificios de departamentos, y un muchacho de 16 sentado sobre ladrillos rojos contempla el movimiento de las mquinas. El cielo en la hora del muchacho es un enorme tornillo hueco con el que la brisa juega. Y el muchacho juega con ideas. Con ideas y con escenas detenidas. La inmovilidad es una neblina transparente y dura que sale de sus ojos. Creme: no es el amor el que va a venir, sino la belleza con su estola de albas muertas.

THE YEARS I think I still see him, his face written in stone on the horizon A beautiful and valiant guy A Latin American poet A loser unconcerned with money A son of the middle classes A reader of Rimbaud and Oquendo de Amat A reader of Cardenal and Nicanor Parra A reader of Enrique Lihn A guy who falls madly in love and after two years is alone but thinks that it cannot be that its impossible to not end up reuniting with her again A vagabond A wrinkled and well-thumbed passport and a dream that crosses border posts sunk in the slime of its own nightmare A seasonal worker A jungle saint A Latin American poet far from Latin American poets A guy that screws and loves and lives pleasant and unpleasant adventures that are increasingly far from the point of departure A body beaten by the wind A short story or a history that almost everyone has forgotten An obstinate guy most likely of Indian Creole and Galician blood A statue that sometimes dreams of returning to find love at an unexpected and terrible hour A reader of poetry A foreigner in Europe A man who loses his hair and teeth but not valor As if valor were valuable As if valor would give him back those distant Mexican days lost youth and love (Well, he said, lets say that I accept losing Mexico and youth but never love) A guy with a strange predisposition to survive A Latin American poet that when night arrives lies down on a straw mattress and dreams A marvelous dream that crosses countries and years A marvelous dream that crosses sicknesses and absences.

Reunion/ Reencuentro
REUNION Tonight looks like a dwarf that grows DE ORY Two poets 20 and 23 years of age, Naked in bed with the curtains closed Intertwine, suck each others nipples and erect Cocks, between vaguely Literary moans As one of their older sisters, slumped in the T.V. armchair, Eyes enormous and scared, Observes the great metallic wave of the Pacific, The one measured in capricious fragments and discontinuous wakes, And screams: fascism, fascism, but only I Hear her, I The writer shut up in the guestroom Uselessly trying to dream An ideal letter Full of adventures and meaningless scenes That mask the true letter, The terrifying letter of goodbye And of a certain kind of unusual Amnesia, As the sister of the poet hits the doors to the empty rooms Like someone hits the successive doors of Thought And screams or whispers fascism, At the same time that the 20 year old poet ass fucks The 23 year old poet with two dry pounds and goes ugh ugh, A 23 centimeter cock like a steel worm In the rectum of the 23 year old poet, And the mouth of the 20 year old poet sticks like a cotton swab To the neck Of the 23 year old poet And the 20 year old poets small pearly white teeth Search for the muscles, the joints, the bones in the neck, In the nape, smell the cerebellum Of the 23 year old poet. And the sister screams Fascism, fascism, a strange fascism, certainly, an almost translucent fascism Like a butterfly from the deep forests, Even though what prevails on her retinas is the Great Metallic Wave Of the Pacific And the poets scream Fed up with so much hysteria: End right fucking now your fucking reading Of Raul Zurita! And right in the moment of saying Zurita They come,

In such a way that the name of our national poet Is exclaimed almost agonizingly Like a free fall into the boiling alphabet soup Of poetry And after silence is established among the playthings And the wind, a wind coming from another continent and maybe even Another time, travels through The wood house, sweeps Under the doors, under the Beds, under the armchairs, And the young poets get dressed and go out to eat At the restaurant, The Meanderings, also called The Cultured Sevillana In homage to the owner A specialist or maybe only a hack In Bocngel and Juan Del Encina And the older sister cries Curled up in the armchair that is touched by the moon And her hiccups travel through the wood house Like a platoon of phantoms, Like a platoon of leaden soldiers, Until they uproot me from my dream, full of candidness and mutations, My vapor dream That I emerge from in a flash Warned by an angel of danger And then I smooth my hair and flowered shirt Before going out to the hall to investigate what is happening, But only the nocturnal breeze and the sound of the sea Answer my questions. And what is it that grows like hair on the heads of corpses? And what is it that grows like nails on the paws that Destiny Saw to bury and mourn just because In the sides of a mountain of ash? Life, I suppose, or this inertia governed by the stars, The epiphany in the double mouth of the decapitated. And I saw the young poets walking hand in hand Through the Paseo Martimo, drifting off like magic reeds of the Club de Yates Heading to the Roca de las Palomas, The one that cuts the bay in two. And I saw the older sister hidden Beneath the bed And I said get out from there, stop crying, no one will hurt anyone, its me, The one that rents the room above from you all. In her eyes, in the condensation that were her eyes, I saw the night navigate at 30 knots per hour Through the sea of jolts, and I saw dawn, There, in the bladder of the moon, turn on the persecution At 35 knots per hour. And I saw the women coming out of Trianon, of Eva, of Ulises With wrinkled skirts and insecure necklines: a coffee with milk And donuts in the Pitu Colomer that would later return To the great current. And I said: lets go, dawn is breaking, let morning undo the remains of the nightmare. And the poets ascended to the lookout point of the Roca de las Palomas And later descended, but through the wall of the sea, To the accommodation of a ledge Like a nest of Pjaro Roc

Where at the mercy of the winds, but protected by stone, They kissed, and caressed their messy hair, Sunk their faces in each others necks Laughing and gasping. And the older sister left with me: we followed The route of the water trucks until the towns geometric delimitation, until the place where The houses, flowers, and pits opened yesterday by forgotten workers And today converted into pots of broth More enduring than us Exploded. And in a bar next to the cliffs we pronounced Our names And I understood that the void could be The size of a nut. She had just arrived from Madrid and in her weariness There grew nightmares and ghosts. How Old are you?, she said laughing. 39, I responded. So old! Im 25, she said. And your name begins with an L, I thought, An L like a boomerang that returns again and again Even though its thrown towards Hell.