Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
Until, one morning, they find them drowned or
stoned
behind the burnt up buildings they had once
defended.
The city is burnt to the ground, wasted and
unapproachable
with the blind windows and the deserted walls
only the stairways still stand, black against
the merciless sky
not leading anywhere like all stairways and
all the words.
Dug up roads with the broken water pipes
that slowly drip water,
sad, thin women standing at the side of each door
two beggars argue about some scattered coins
old silent men next to a dead child
people gesture in half lighted rooms,
then
they go out, each going to a different direction
years go by
and the water still flows
and him at that opposite brothel,
with its distorted face,
from an old hand grenade;
the prostitute turns her head aside
not to look at it
and he remembers the days of struggle
so he won’t cry
and the water still flows
noiseless, invisible, endless
under the tears, the years, the corpses
watering the seeds that will sprout tomorrow;
friends have vanished
enemies were mean-minded that you could
feed on hatred
passing by money changers bargain our days
with phony coins from uncertain future seasons
we are late, we are late, he yelled, and you couldn’t
hear him from the blowing wind.
Libros Libertad 