Esperé: I Waited (poem is in both languages)
Esperé
esperé al amanecer
como se espera al enfermo
que baja del monte cargado en hamaca.
me sentí viejo y contagiado
pero el viejo aquejado no era yo
sino el que suplanto las manos
por ruedas, el que menguó
a la madrugada, a la zafra
y al ingenio. me opuse su dictadura
a sabiendas
de que yo no salvaría a nadie.
vigilaron lo que escribo,
arrestaron
mis palabras, balearon
mis poesías
y me consumió la soledad
de las piedras.
el musgo del silencio las cubría
lentamente con estiércol
del verdadero enfermo.
el faisán del corazón deserto la escuela
de esta dictadura.
día a día se metía más en la embrolla
del consumo
para ocultar la humillación de los
gases lacrimógenos.
y preguntó: ¿dónde esconderán
su casa de torturas, su gulag? ¿qué me dejaran
llevar conmigo?
I Waited
I waited for dawn
like someone waits for the sick
to come down from the bush on a hammock.
I felt old and contaminated
but the elderly infirmed man
was not I; it was the one
who replaced hands with wheels,
the one who diminished dawn,
sugarcane harvest,
and wit. I opposed his dictatorship
knowing I could not save anyone.
They policed my pen,
arrested my words, shot
my poetry,
isolation of stones
consumed me.
The moss of silence
covered them with manure
of the truly sick.
The heart's pheasant deserted
the school of that dictatorship;
muddling daily
in the consumption of objects
hopeful it would hide the humiliation of
tear gas canisters shot in its vicinity.
And I ask: Where are their torture
houses, their gulags? Will they allow me take
what is mine?
I waited for dawn
like someone waits for the sick
to come down from the bush on a hammock.
I felt old and contaminated
but the elderly infirmed man
was not I; it was the one
who replaced hands with wheels,
the one who diminished dawn,
sugarcane harvest,
and wit. I opposed his dictatorship
knowing I could not save anyone.
They policed my pen,
arrested my words, shot
my poetry,
isolation of stones
consumed me.
The moss of silence
covered them with manure
of the truly sick.
The heart's pheasant deserted
the school of that dictatorship;
muddling daily
in the consumption of objects
hopeful it would hide the humiliation of
tear gas canisters shot in its vicinity.
And I ask: Where are their torture
houses, their gulags? Will they allow me take
what is mine?
© Sergio A. Ortiz, July 4, 2010
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