American novelist Paul Austerauthor of a prolific work in which the “New York Trilogy” stands out, Brooklyn Follies either The invention of lonelinessdied at 77 years old
He built literary labyrinths in all his works, in which he mixed fiction, reality and autobiography, and with which he captured millions of readers around the world. In addition to novels, his prolific work translated into more than 40 languages includes poetry, stories, essays, and theater and film scripts (some directed by him). Below are three poems in which he reflects on death:
(From the book Disappearances1975)
There are the many… and they are here:
and for every stone that counts between them
excludes himself
as if he, too,
I could breathe for the first time
in the space that separates it
of himself.
Well the wall is a word. and there is no word
that he doesn’t count
like a stone in the wall.
So start again,
and every time you start to breathe
feels like there has never been another
time, as if in all this time of life
could find himself
in every thing that is not.
What breathes, therefore,
It’s time, and know now
that if he lives
It’s just what you live in
and will continue to live
without him.
———————–
(From the book Disappearances1975)
He’s alone. And from the moment he starts breathing
It’s not anywhere. plural death, born
in the jaws of the singular,
and the word that would build a wall
from the innermost stone
of the life.
Well he is none of the things
of which he speaks,
and despite himself
says I, as if it also started
to live in all the others
which they are not. Well, the city is huge,
and the mouth does not suffer
no escape
that does not devour the word
of oneself.
Therefore, there are the many,
and all these many lives
carved in the stones
of a wall,
and the one who was going to breathe
You’ll know there’s nowhere else to go
what .. here.
So start again,
as if I were going to breathe
for the last time.
Well there is no more time. And it’s the end of time
what begins
————————————-
(From “Fragments of the cold”, 1976-1977)
Because we become blind
on the day that expires with us,
and because we have seen our breath
cloud
the mirror of the air,
the eye of the air must not open
to nothing but the word
the one we give up: winter
it will have been a place
of maturity.
We become the dead
of another life than ours.
