Facts — (Buenós Aires, Rome, 1974-1978)

Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
 translated by Hardie St. Martin

Things They Don’t Know

dark times / filled with light / the sun
spreads sunlight over the city split
by sudden sirens / the police hunt goes on / night falls and we’ll
make love under this roof / our eighth

in one month / they know almost everything about us / except
this plaster ceiling we make love
under / and they also know nothing about
the rundown pine furniture under the last ceiling / or
about the window the night pounded on while you shone like the      sun / or
about the beds or the floor where
we made love this month / with faces around us like the sun
spreading sunlight over the city