UPROOTED TREE
Excerpt
Tree, how came you, dead, onto my sandy shore?
Whose hand uprooted you, which power took you
from the mountain slope and threw you in the waves?
For a hundred long years, age had left your branches
calm, unwrinkled, and unbendably
attached to your iron and impenetrable bark,
and the ravine’s wild calves sharpened their horns on you.
So tell me, mighty tree, how you lie dead now on my shore?
Free of care the insubordinate soul took wing
as if it were an adept, only sometimes seeking cover
under the pines of the hill or sometimes under the cypresses,
sometimes nesting secretly in far-off, lonely chapels
to search for apparitions. Alone, exhausted
it found refuge there. The dead took them as ghosts
during the night, but it perceived them as flowers
and bestowed its eulogies and sang its songs for them.
Libros Libertad 