Cities of 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