Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

Someone     asked me for an Edelweiss from Rilke and suddenly the Poems              written by a younger me returned, as did the Notebooks                that caused me such heartache, the Elegies               with the terrible but necessary angel of beauty, the Sonnets and in them another           Flower whose name I can’t remember, the Diary       written on the shores of the Rhine, So many Hours,      so many images, so many winds from childhood, so many Places       that once were mine in The Distant Viper, my total nearness.

It is written against all innocence against the ditsy wind around my house the empty word games the aesthetics of a Viennese waltz. It is written by opening the veins until the cry is silenced.

Other farewells in the songs of Gloria Gaynor His name was Stephen. His figure was a ripe peach, a night branch full of stars, a flock of birds overflying the fragrant eucalyptus in the schoolyard. Something inside me shouts in protest: at first I was afraid, I was petrified… And I bleed and I curl up whenever he threatens with leaving on the train to oblivion.