MORE LITTLE BALLS OF MERCURY
‍ ‍-translated by KM Cascia and Garrett Phelps

1

Poised to sing, poised to die, why brag about dying, poised to sign a last will and
testament while the inundating rain of imprudence floods the patio, while I do
not manage to sign neither do I lose hope
let's see that courage
no: truly I understand, but I'm sorry; once again I will be, as I once said, with my
expressionist bragging in that metropolis
where you sin
still, let's go, globally and anyway
this fear
why?—I'd love it if they spoke to me, though they deny me a kiss, with their lips—
why not submerge yourself in this fear, panicked and real?
the rain continues
I'm sick
I'm waiting for my food (a ruse), the return of the beloved, of likeable Sebas,
who I've offended with some miserable pages from my notebook, who I've dragged
along on my medical adventures, subjected to suggestion and hypnosis tests,
affiliated with the Psychiatric Korps, and: retreaded with the stubborn capsule of
anal drugs and: translators, too
perverting the essence

It rains so much

I was asked to write, simply that: to write
and I couldn't do it
because further
further
further
Well, this is—already is—almost a felony of indecency
hungry for theory
as in every borderline case
the horror of having betrayed the pact (I did not write) and the violent
logic of the punishment which awaits me
to be read
as I will be read...
though I wrote nothing!

2

The dogma of my apparitions continues

Today roses have grown
In every cedar pulpit
bells ring
and cheap weddings type out the license
The semicircle becomes a circle and the poet a theologian
we are a sole corruption
I said to my wife
and now the peace of calm hatred will come
to rigorously separate rooms
Father Carlos had said to me in confidence
that we feed scavengers
inflicting this marriage on ourselves
but I answered that hatred
hatred is a sacrament
and I couldn't permit myself the luxury of not poetizing anymore
scratch the work with a nun's innocence
tired of pagan failures
Father Carlos smokes
I smoke too
We both have yellowed fingers
Art must end this way
Strangled like a hen by a priest and a psychologist
And sex the method
besides
people walk around confused
like...
bah! the prewar set out this kind of problem
and if art is always a Happy End
the sexton, hallelujah! has already taken their precautions
In Treblinka everything marched along perfectly: erectly
As Christ demanded from the cross

Christ smokes
Flicks away the butt and a centurion
Gives him one last whistle
Between disaster and miracle

3

Since I lack an angel to pray to
I wound up the trickster of Argentine poetry (Argentina!)
I wound up though I am not bored
I lead a family life and I paid
down to my last peso
for my father's hounddog funeral.
I'm even thinking of getting married and writing
(“Or would I prefer to go back to the hospital??)
avant-garde novels like prescriptions from my lover, the doctor.
What's bored is Divinity
itself
which obliges me to author autos-de-fe.

Clearly I will laugh last and best
but when I put on the habit
prune the tree
this is a fragment
though the ellipses
—I detest them

I will be
The Exemplary Husband
Generously I excuse myself
I leave sex to the rhetoricians

Born in Buenos Aires in 1940, Osvaldo Lamborghini was an unpublishably
obscene and untranslatably brilliant writer of poetry and prose, a queer icon, and
a leading figure of the Neobaroque movement of the 70s and 80s. The three books of his work that appeared during his lifetime—El fiord, Sebregondi retrocede, and
Poemas—had a devoted and often fanatical readership, which included novelist
César Aira, who has since played a major role in Lamborghini’s posthumous
reputation. He spent his final years in Barcelona, working on Teatro proletario de
cámara (“Proletarian Chamber Theater”), an immense cross-disciplinary project
composed of writing, painting, pornography and photographic collage. He died, in exile, in 1985.

KM Cascia was born in Michigan City, Indiana in 1979. They are the translator of Manuel Maples Arce’s City: Bolshevik Superpoem in 5 Cantos (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) and Stridentist Poems (World Poetry Books, 2023), Gastón Fernández’s Apparent Breviary (World Poetry Books, 2025). Formerly an editor of the translation journals Asymptote and Calque, they’re also the author of two collections of poems, Goethe and Days. 

Garrett Phelps was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1990. His things have been published by various outlets on- and offline, including BOMB, Black Sun Lit, The Poetry Project Newsletter, and Fence. He lives in Queens.