The Car
The stranger chatted with the woman in a low-toned voice.
The dead foreigner stared at his destiny: that useless outline
dead people leave on the chair.
Birds struck the ceiling and fell into the dirty sink, where all
the stories ended; embalmed old men sat behind the window glass.
The stoa was dark with the damp stores where they sold tripods
for caskets and wreaths for the glory we once dreamed, however,
those others lived in the same house; those we never see, yet
you hear them during the nights when they walk holding
the burnt lamps, and sometimes we mistook their incomprehensible
gestures as ours, while the young dead servant girl, with whom
we made love long ago, stretched her arm over my vigils so that
I would give her the pair of nylons I had promised her. Then
stillness and the sound of the departing car slowly faded away.
Libros Libertad 