When I see Them Go By

Daisy Zamora (Nicaragua)
translated by Margaret Randall

When I see them go by, I sometimes ask myself: what
must they feel, those women who decided to be perfect,
to preserve their marriages at any cost no matter how
their husbands turned out (party–animal, womanizer,
gambler, always looking for a fight, loudmouth, violent,
madman, deviant, perhaps abnormal, neurotic, bully,
completely unbearable, ignorant, deadly, boring, brute,
insensitive, slovenly, egomaniac, only out for himself,
disloyal, cheat, thief, traitor, liar, raping their daughters,
torturing their sons, king of the house, tyrant everywhere)
but they endure it all and only God above knows what
they suffer.

When I see them go by, slowed and dignified, their sons
and daughters long gone, alone in the house with that man
they once loved (perhaps he is calmer now, doesn’t drink,
barely talks, just sits in front of the television, shuffles
around in his slippers, yawns, sleeps, snores, gets up early,
is ailing, half–blind, harmless, almost childlike) I ask myself:

Do they dare imagine themselves, one night, guiltless widows
dreaming they are free at last and coming back to life?