Texts by Oriol Sàbat
It has not been able to say anything. Uprooted, splintered and chopped, it can still be a tree. The tribulation is perhaps a gift. I can not sacrifice you. It does not want my hand to grab the axe. I will give you something tender and soft. And your infant tears will fall over my tears. Do not say that you can not understand me. We will be able to laugh together after all the branches abrade my face and my blood can do and say something. But many believe that this is no longer possible and that we are waiting in vain for another spring.
From the book Obrim els ulls a les ruïnes (Open Our Eyes to the Ruins), 1995-1999
You have expelled us from Paradise, though we were also working it, we were harvesting the fruits from the trees and playing with the canes and stones. I see a circle of fire, I put my hand near and my flesh burns. I do not feel pain. I draw it back and the flames disappear without leaving a mark. A man passes by on the pavement, one step behind the other, one step behind the other, one step behind the other, advancing like it was a miracle. On the table I leave the stone that I found in the river. A poor stone that has a crown of spines. And the blood drips down. Now we are on Earth. And after having found Hell in the garden, we will want, amid tears, to find flowers in Hell. But this stone that we drag is too heavy. We climb on top of it, to raise our heads and look at what is there. And we fall down again, hit by a branch that breaks.
From the book La creu de venes ( The Cross of Veins), 2000
The laughter of all things grows after the fecundation, the river of lava, the spattered seed over breasts and wounds. In spoonfuls I swallow your food and drink and the fearful hope grows; the starving wolf that comes disguised through the doors.
From the book Desenterra una flor (Dig Up a Flower), 2001
Erupt and rebel your mystery
violent and strong
against the ruin of mankind
that fights to not feel,
that fights to not see,
that fights to be distracted
like the mean ones fight
when they do not move a finger Sign, cross, stone, trace, crack, all that I have found on this purity. The sweetness of the afternoon has made me dream of the violence of the morning. I have found felicity like a stone nailed to clay, and an angel and a demon and a snake intertwined. And fire, space and time shattered to pieces.
From the book Frontera amb el verd mentider (Border With the False Green), 2002
The poetry will uproot you once again, though you do not want to know anything about yourself or others. But first destroy this self that bothers you, make a hole in it in the centre and sing the exterior, what borders it, everything profound that is beyond, and that which perhaps does not have a soul or need one. An epic, that is what you want, but you will have to find the heroes who, surging from the clay, do not know if they resuscitate themselves or die. You will have to find the stones that, by hitting, form their cold, glacial faces, with the passion of the glaciers that fall crashing into the ocean. And if you find who will take the fire to the extinguished hope of a piece of humanity, you will also have to find its destiny, you will have to discover its steps, incendiary amidst the snow, the frozen crystal, that breaks with the volcanic earthquake that goes along sanding down the path. But all this that you desire, and even what you do not desire, all is dead. And to relive it is no longer possible...And you are left without anything, with the self massacred beneath your foot, remembering that at one time, long ago, there existed a bond, the unity, the hand or the powerful circle, the ring and the beauty...Now everything is shattered, a dream, a light in the memory. Both you and I are apparitions, presences, mechanisms that live, feel and die; extremely complex mechanisms but miserable.
From the book Poemes del Destructor (Poems of the Destroyer), 2005
Tree, face, orgy, concentration camp. We look at all this without making concessions...We roll downward, faster as we go, and we drag the world with us...Everything had been simple, under a clear light without traps. On the other side of the wall, the fire or the ditch, on the other side...Be still. The fixed look on the cadaver. We think there are laughs and flowers, that is true...so many things are or seem truth itself...We say arm or stake. We have already said it. So what? Sweet, sweet, glossy look, enchanting look of the afternoon partially made ...We only want the gift of a moment of absolute quietude on the way towards the collapse, when we break everything that binds us, every boundary and we are already nothing.
From the book Els qui moriran et saluden (Those Who Are About to Die Salute You), 2006
Wonder without past or future...Bewildered beasts staring at us with round and darkened eyes...Silence is impossible. Everything has to make sense, they dictate to us invariably and we can not expect anything else. Space, illusion, magnetic blindness. We are not here, we are not anywhere. When we scratch the perception and there is nothing, everything is void, and by beating we form something present in front of us, and we have not done anything...I tell you that it is best to sleep like the beast, wait for flesh like the spider, and fly in circles without having to count them or calculate them...The forest is a memory, it was the present, it was such a small thing like anything else. And it is the pit where our emotions fall, where it is less difficult for us to rummage through it to not find anything, the only place where we can laugh without malice.