You are made
of light and mountain
avenues of stone
and rivers that weave through you
on descent.
You are made
of obsolete names
dispirited neighborhoods
ugly monuments
that seek your roots
beyond all certainty.
You are dark
and constant in your exile,
abrupt
in your violence
when you unveil your streets
to dispel a false dream.
City of labyrinths,
I listen to you:
alone in the depths,
different
from the silent men
who come together
to recover their dead.
And I walk the sadness
of your scattered loneliness
and can hardly make sense of
the speechlessness
in the intimacy of the mountain
that finds pleasure
in remaining concealed.
But, it’s true.
Your memory is a cry
a deaf reason with slit throat
a tree in darkness
awaiting the secret
of a hidden metal.
~ Blanca Wiethüchter, trans. from Spanish by Jessica Sequeira
Blanca Wiethüchter wrote the poetry books ‘el verde no es un color’ and ‘luminar’ and the novel ‘el jardÃn de nora’.
Jessica Sequeira is a writer and translator living in Buenos Aires.Â
