Sara Vanégas Coveña (Ecuador)
translated by Margaret Randall

1

the trees
fold themselves in silence
the birds — in shade
now — return to
their branches / your heart
looks in vain
for a place
to hide

2

the birds return
to the Angelus
in transparent evening
(my heart is just another bird
kneeling)

Sara Vanégas Coveña (Ecuador)
translated by Margaret Randall

The whole city awoke among gray and birds
projected its visions in every passageway
and collapsed in the puddle

who will rescue your image from the water?

by Raul Zurita (Chile)
translated by Margaret Randall

Cities of Water
to PW

A man in his death throes dreamed of you, a man
in the throes of death followed you.
One who wanted to die with you
when you desired death.
There is my body wrecked on the reefs
when drowning I saw you emerge and eternally
close and eternally far you were the beach
where I could not land.
All is pain in you.
I greet you then and greet the eternal that lives
in defeat, in what is forever shattered,
to the infinite rising from shipwrecks,
because if our lives were water, our misfortunes
were rocks.
It is not me but my countries that speak to you:
The sound of the ocean I evoke, the stars
in the cutout of night.
Brilliant with night your face rises
covering dawn. You open your eyelids
and millions of men awake,
catch their buses, go out,
cities of water in your eyes

by Daisy Zamora (Nicaragua)
translated by Margaret Randall

I

My words won’t reach you. They will be intercepted, twisted,
distorted so they’ll shatter silently, and you won’t be able to hear
them. I know all too well now that you’re elderly and fragile you
are no longer that figure unbowed before the lie intimidating the
amphibians of murky waters by brandishing truth like a flag of
purity. How sorry I am, Father, not to be at your side as I was
back then, now that they say you are sweeter of temperament and
your adversaries invade your home as if it were theirs, trying to
cheat you of what’s left. How they harass you, believing you as
defenseless as a small animal, a lamb prepared for the feast. And
you, allowing them to tear you apart because you are in your
galaxy, have left all that behind and it no longer matters that each
of them grabs a piece.

II

But now you’re dead. Such relief in the mob eager to heap its
scorn upon you. On their false Olympus of power, they croak
your name, praise you and are smug with false gratitude. Now
that they believe you dead, they can steal the words that
frightened them and use them as if they are their own. And no
one will notice their subterfuge. They live in fraud and by fraud,
say whatever and Nothing. They are masters of Nothing, that
from which they come and to which they will return, while you
ascend to your galaxy and your word, alive among us, scattered
over Earth and flying to the Universe where you embrace God.

III

Free now of the siege and its bullies, you become yourself once
again. What power in your words, the last you uttered, speaking
truth to lies. From your star you will have seen the fury spewed by
her of the sterile forest. Her rabid hordes fail to strangle your
death. Your ashes are the soil of Nicaragua now and the earth of
Solentiname is sacred. Pilgrims will come from everywhere to
honor you in your sanctuary. And those who continue to
persecute you in the grave will be mere putrefied rot. Sleep
soundly, Father. Love will win.

San Francisco, August 12, 2019 / March 6, 2020.