Long Listed for the 2023 Griffin Poetry Awards
Suddenly, when the counter attack commenced
and everyone retreated and left you alone
you remained unarmed and naked in the middle
of this endless night
you, horrified, realized that you had to carry
your wasted life alone. You, not anybody else,
had to live with your two hands that gave everything
and the memory that doesn’t forgive anything.
Then you realized why the desperate become
such great revolutionaries.
“The only thing that frightens me is death, he’d say,
I’d like us to live together forever” and her cracked
voice along with the fear of the unapproachable
remained in the room: forever, forever —
“please stop, I can’t take it”
Forever.
However, when night comes and the sky darkens
and trains whistle at a distance
and we are suddenly defenceless like victors
before death,
or defeated opposite eternity, like a soft creak,
the essence of things that slowly die is heard, then,
we, breathless, wish to slowly hug each other;
oaths, hugs, paroxysms, kisses, tears sweeter
than any happiness, shivers, unheard off words,
foolishness, most pure lowness and erotic humiliation
bright like glory. And other horrible unheard off
things that we live and that no one dares to reveal.
Libros Libertad 