Universal Darkk: A Search for Dulcinea, Language, and Ruin

She enters the funeral parlor,

“Where’s the Escribidor?” she asks.

“Ahí está,” someone answers,
pointing at the coffin.

“This is his body…”

— Rodrigo Palacios, “A Search for Dulcinea, According to Velázquez, an Anti-Novel”

“To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric. And this corrodes even the knowledge of why it has become impossible to write poetry today.”

— Theodor W. Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society” (1949)

…after a long march
along the interminable river of time,
we arrived at the two gates
of the luminescent dark—
the Universal Darkk.

On the gate to the right,
we contemplate with lidless eyes:

Arbeit macht frei.

And on the other:

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate.

Through which of the two thresholds
are we to enter
A Search for Dulcinea?

What will become of our search
through the language
set in motion by its author,
who accepted his death beforehand,
conceding that the moment he inscribed
a word in his text, he died—

and that word joined the murmur
of violence forged
in the contradictory words
of the forsaken gates?

Each one of those words wrought in this text
has blood on its hands.

I was destroyed so that they could enjoy
the right to lie and to cheat
in the search that ensues
upon entering the darkness.

And I can’t do anything about it.