::: SKIDROW PENTHOUSE :::

I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out
and the first loon tells me its word.
I will kill you tomorrow just before dawn
when you are in bed, lost in dreams,
and it will be like copulation or semen on your lips,
like a kiss or an embrace, or like an act of gratitude.
I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out
and the first loon tells me its word,
and in its beak it will bring me your death warrant
which will be like a kiss, or an act of gratitude,
or like a prayer for the never-arriving daybreak.
I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out
and the third dog barks in the ninth hour
in the tenth leafless tree now without sap,
no one any longer knowing why it stands in the earth.
I will kill you tomorrow when the thirteenth leaf
falls upon the ground of misery,
and you will be a leaf or some pallid thrush
that returns in the remote secret of the afternoon.
I will kill you tomorrow, and you will beg for forgiveness,
for that obscene flesh, for that dark sex
which this brilliance of iron will have for a phallus,
which that sepulcher, forgetfulness, will have for a kiss.
I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out,
and you will see what a beauty you are when you are dead,
all full of flowers, with your arms crossed
and your lips closed like when you pray
or when you implore me once more for the word.
I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out,
and from that heaven of which legends speak,
you will beg, tomorrow, for me and my salvation.
I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out,
when you see an angel armed with a dagger,
naked and silent at the foot of your white bed.
I will kill you tomorrow and you will see that you will come
when that coldness passes between your two legs.
I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out.
I will kill you tomorrow, and I will love your ghost,
and I will run to your grave on those nights
when my throbbing cock burns anew
the dreams of sex, the mysteries of semen,
and I will make of your tombstone my first bed
for to dream of gods, and trees, and mothers,
and upon your tombstone I shall throw the dice of the night.
I will kill you tomorrow when the moon comes out,
and the first loon tells me its word.

Leopoldo María Panero
(translated by Arturo Mantecón)