Salinger Speaks

I'm aware of the intensions threatening me
and have the needless certainty of my refusals
and my most secret vices;
only the depth of my soul knows my steps
it is the only one savoring
my shadow's color.
I'm a man alone;
like all of you, I'm alone, young men,
I'm alone with my personal and exclusive way
of being alone,
navigating anxiety, walking around the living room,
looking for rest in movement,
saying that neither and saying no,
observing the world obliquely,
sure of my darkness and of other people's brightness,
annihilated by the red flower of absolute lucidity,
a rose of death and joy,
a flower never becoming joy or words,
pig's tale of my species.
Abyss and cipher,
unadvancing, hitting word,
I'm a poem, vacuous word, invisible punch,
delinquent smoke I am,
kick, embrace, and candor
chiaroscuro of ecstasies and deliberation,
this I am, flame that burns and doesn't illuminate, lash
of fire without clarity and permanence,
someone who disdains memory,
and wishes to stop being a pronoun and submerge himself
in something deeper that oblivion,
the emptiness of matter,
this deep and silent beating.

—Translated by Ilan Stavans