LA IDEA ERA IRNOS AÚN NIÑOS (Selection)
By Oliver Glave
Translation from the Spanish by Rowan Dent
FATIMA, THROUGH THE WINDOW OF THE BUS To my parents: the decision to stay is also a departure… Gösta Ågren Whilst his mother's womb contained the growing Baal Even then, the sky was waiting quiet and pale Naked, young, immensely marvellous Like Baal loved it when he came to us Bertolt Brecht
We will not be here forever But we nest a wild hope in you, In your not forgetting us. You, born from us, present in all our wounds, Might be allowed put to fly if I could only besiege the winds That run wild inside of me. We pray that you, confused by the certainty of a foreign place —already losing a memory of a language that was yours at least in half your blood— don’t rage and dissolve. Fear and separation lie in every corner yet the sky that shelters us today is the same gray sky under which you survive.
IMAGES OF BRUNEI
We sat to drink coffee under a full winter’s sun, without suspicion, without wanting. Only the terraces and wind under the street lights in serene commotion. You said you were leaving, that you were abandoning everything for a promise to yourself. I know the face of farewell; walking by your side. An unwelcome thought falls into my mind like a fertile bomb. It pulls at my heart with blind hands; the heart falls into two halves, broken, ticking. Days have passed without hearing from you. Days that are the distance between spirit and its desolation.
To Helena Paulsson
ARRIVAL AT FONTHILL ROAD
I saw your photos again last night and I couldn’t understand the difference between us. You’re laughing there no empty chairs, no lack of cigarettes. You even told us about dreaming of being a little god fighting in landscapes of static battle. I know I am just one more in your collection one of those that await a welcome sensing fleshwhatever lies beyond tangential or unneccesary.
OCTOBER 9th For Yolanda González
She loves the earth at night, when she can see its lights and doesn’t recognize its misery. And she no longer comes to find me, to pick up my pieces. She flees while I dream of places that do not belong to me, that don’t exist for me, homes I’ll never seeShe might have something to say, but she runs because she does not know what it might be. And I feel I travel far, tearing up eyes, the guilt heavy in my arms travelling overseas to anticipate smiles from a distance. Songs, any songs, bring back the memory of having heard it together, you shouting the words Pure devotion where there is no light.