LUIS ENRIQUE BELMONTE

 

                                     



I WRITE

 

 

I write to scare off debt collectors

and to slip through the cracks of grey days

I write to understand those who suddenly lose their voice

and to listen to the cord played by the desert wind

and to lose what I have and to win and lose again

I write so the gypsies will take me with them.

 

 

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PASSAGEWAY


The owls arrived.
In the blackest part of night,
when only bodies
hardly illuminate.

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It was a macabre song
like the chipped tooth in the sink,
like the handcuffed man stumbling,
like the shoe in the ditch.

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But the bodies kept
lighting the transit.
Bodies entwined,
bodies dreaming,
bodies with a hummingbird inside.


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               A light
in the passageway wandered
by the living who got lost
chasing a strange aroma
and the dead who return
for a piece of bread.

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The passageway,

the scream of the rooster,

the day’s sting,

the gleam of the new world
in your eyes that open.

 

 

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THE BIRD OF HOPE


They marked the door with knife stabs,
belched out our names,
     spit on the mailboxes,
threw sulfur in the garden.

But we,
we wove the blankets.

We were singing at a whisper, in the dark.

Pale,
          bathed in dust,
we kept
scraping the floor.

Inside there was a bird that shivered
injured, blind, soaked.

 

 

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WE DON'T KNOW


We don’t know who ministers our shadows.

 

We watch those who dig and dig,

        preparing the dirt for the dead.

                        They insist,

but they only pull out

shells,

                        splinters,

broken sacks.

 

We still don’t know

the source of the pulse,

 

the final breath,

 

the time of volcanoes,

 

the warmth of the bird in your hand,

 

the endless pit of lost words.

 

We don’t know.

 

 

 

                                                                                                      

 

      

 

                                   

 

 


TYPO 18