Two poems

Translated from Spanish by Kim Jensen and Judith Santopietro

[Istanbul]  

regarding the long black dresses   

regarding the body’s natural sweat  

regarding what isn’t obvious  

but spins   buys    creates knots  

—sometimes we get lost in the distance   

of a wrong set of words—      

other bodies live   

I let them slip into the shorts and miniskirts of the European summer  

I let them be dragged inside the heavy luggage   

of the women rushing past    pulling a child by the hand  

I’m not holding anyone’s hand  

I’m being pushed along by the mass of compulsive travelers   

their duty-free bags that are filling with perfumes  

the elegant shop windows of the watch and jewelry stores   

the mass has a passport that’s why it moves forward   

I simply call it the mass   

although by its characteristics   

it could just be a continent   

with its strange noises  

it could be one of the scents from the little perfume bottles  

that are thrown in my face   

a sweet smell of musk that sticks to my tongue  

to one side of me three men pray tracing a point   

on the horizon   

I who have lost sight of god   

follow the patterns of their movements hoping to find   

some clue   

but I’m suddenly hit by the blurry light of a kiosk  

and the display boards that offer precise instructions reminding me   

of practical decisions  

where to run in case someone plants a suspicious suitcase  

or if something flashes  

or if someone says to run because the numbers are shooting up like on Wall Street  

and for sure something will explode before the light flickers  

and I think of the poems I’ll forget if that happens  

in that futile attempt to convince myself that there won’t be time   

to review the details  

the spark will shoot through me like the certainty   

that the only thing that happens is what we begin to leave behind  

some kind of gunpowder mixed   

with water  

that erases the rain  

it happens after the bombs  

and nothing is like the first time   

not this city divided into two ways of seeing the world   

two ways of dressing it   listening to it   and talking to it  

of hating and loving  

of eating and getting your hands dirty  

of praying   of cracking   expelling oneself   

from one’s self   

two ways that walk side by side  

religion        passion  

I have to explain the reason for my trip  

I see it in the eyes that show me  

where I’m supposed to get in line and wait   

I’ve seen myself in so many ways I don’t know who I’m talking about anymore  

I call it the journey to my roots  

in any other situation I’d simply be someone  

who travels   

who tacks a rainbow above the skyline  

who pulls off the scabs hidden beneath face paint  

once again I unpack myself in whatever my mouth observes  

I powder my face with monosyllables   

but it’s not enough to convince   

the immigration officer  

He just wants to get it over with quickly  

it’s nothing personal  

others may discuss geopolitics  

he only cares if I’ll have a place to sleep  

if I’ll have too many kids so this land won’t be big enough  

to raise them and watch them grow  

Latin America is a giant heap of people    says the Uruguayan poet  

as for me I come from the labyrinth  

America is also a heap of spare parts  

like forests and water  

that will be sold or maybe don’t even exist anymore  

but the sky casts an indescribable shade of grey   

on my face  

The immigration officer  

makes me talk for hours   

about the healing properties of certain   

tourist destinations in my country  

I take him back in time  

I tell him    remember the day your father also went out   

to sell the stars or steal them  

he cluttered the sky         poured cement and filled it with people  

                            filled it with little windows  

I always end up telling the story   

of the journey by boat against the current of the Pacific  

the trek over ice     everything that was thawing  

underfoot and my other grandparents  

their urgent rush to cross   

they were immigrants in their own homeland  

the agrarian reform gave them lands and a deed  

that we their grandchildren abandoned   

I tell the story of the disparity between  

the land is for those who work it and  

the kitchen is for those who tend it  

From my immigrant grandparents I still have erosions  

in my skin and a photograph: my father barefoot and my grandfather   

I put on shoes for them   

and like them I travel with whatever fits in a small bag  

wherever I go I cough I rasp I laugh I am the desert sand