The wind carves faces
and you watching the grass
are ignorant of the signs
of all eternity
Outside of you
No roots are possible
How can I name you
without death growing?
Places that man engenders as his
were never mine. Today I keep calling
and this strange voice
speaks of faces, rivers and paths.
—Always a return—
and rain is falling through my eyes.
The street never spoke of my presence
nor did the mornings remember my absence.
What is the name of the wind
that found me repeating another name?
What other thing would I have been
but this shadow
drunk
clumsy
wandering?
Time:
matter in which I travel—and I vanish—
You are darkening the night and the place of my shadow
is all that remains!
Tiger life over our lives
with which net will I capture you?
I love you, hostile bird.
Andrée Chedid
For years and years and years
it was hard to wake up on this earth
marked by fear
while the dead and the eagles curled up
under the moon.
It has always been difficult to learn
the torture
of not finding eyes in the eyes
and agreeing that the bread and the word
were a long chill.
For years and years
identity was un-drawing itself
among ancient voices.
Today everything in you charms us.
Even you, beautiful and darkest death.
Under the Elements
Rain:
anoints my skin
washes my eyes.
My night opens itself
for you.
My roaming.
My infinite straying
pursues me.
What voices from what heavens
do you bring me?
What god
cries
that I don’t hear?
Uncertain brew
I hang out the dawn
and the hours don’t know it.
The boy who was my heart
lights other terrors.
Further away than lightening
Who spoke of calmness?
I hang out the dawn
The great unknown!
Perhaps time
will be my biggest shadow.
Maybe my eternally lost steps
will look for me in stray cities
and all over the earth
they’ll be afraid of finding me.
Maybe my eye and his astonishment
will sneak off.
The panic of finding each other
—because there’s no night for the blind star
nor a memory that helps
without being awake under the moon—
Fevered soul who then
saw the dignity of a dead person
passing with an ineffable face.
I hang out the dawn
and I mark myself with poppies.
As if I were a god
who in confusion
searches for his pain in me,
silence passes.
The slow rain falls.
Night and I
will have to get together
for the party of the eclipse.
Night and I
together in the broken mirror,
as if the same god
terrified
measured us in his nothingness.
Amparo Osorio
Born in Bogote. Her books of poetry include: Huracanes de sue?os (1983-1984), Gota ebria (Ediciones Embalaje, 1987), Territorio de m?scaras (Hojas Sueltas, 1990), Migraci?n de la ceniza (Editorial Magisterio, 1998) Antolog?a esencial (Colecci?n Los Conjurados, 2001), and Memoria absuelta (Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 2004). Her poetry has been translated into English, French, Italian, Portuguese, Hungarian and Russian. She is the editorial coordinator for the journal Com?n Presencia. She also authored the anthology La casa le?da (Com?n Presencia Editores, 1996) and Geometr?a iluminada, a report with Omar Rayo (Ediciones Embalaje, 2001). Her book Territorio de m?scaras received an Honorable Mention in Mexico’s Plural contest in 1989. She also received a Colcultura scholarship for literary creativity in 1994 for her book Migraci?n de la ceniza.
amparoiosorio@yahoo.es