A Song for Oblivion
Javier Fuentes Vargas
“Mientras viva podrán negarme esta tierra,
pero no evitarán que me funda en ella cuando muera.”
-Rafael Lechowsky
My hands were populated with ghosts:
Frantic stars
that tear the darkness from the sky,
the duel of forms
that is fought
between shadows and lights.
My hands search the geography of home.
The front door
Is a harsh welcome,
a distant sweet scent
for everyone who leaves,
a necessary ritual
that pretends
to belong somewhere.
Stopping before the green that enters through the windows
is to miss everything that is from outside
memory keeps hitting us.
A strange task to remember:
resurrect ghosts,
refuse to forget
Fleeing from all the white spaces
that cloud the past
increasingly difficult to recall.
Wait for them to exit the rooms
all the noises of longed-for times,
deceiving us with the vain promise
that the hands will feel again
the childhood touch.
Thanks to oblivion is the very reason for this
fall of the flagstones of a ruined temple.
Is to not build upon our names
all the scaffolding necessary to support existence.
Oblivion appears to us like holy water,
anoints our forehead, almost kissing it
kneeling on the banks of tears.
Oblivion is not the same as abandonment:
the first one arrives, installs itself silently
and begins to put its hands
in every corner of the house.
The second one is chosen
ignores what it regrets
and it names all the graves it has dug.
***
My tenderness knows only one language:
the childhood
there my voice yearns
scream all the birds
that my innocence
was ripped from the sky.
5 epigrams to know the rain
I
Where everything gets wet
the desire to be thirsty is born.
II
Let the storm not be surprising.
Enough are
Just the two hands of a child
to cradle a storm.
III
The rain leaves me with a thousand mirrors.
In all of them
the important thing is observed:
the transition of our lives.
All that happens
as we go from one place to another.
IV
The power lines were filled with birds.
V
There is not always a rainbow at the end.
Sometimes, we are left to pick up rubble
Other times, to look for the one we miss.
But there is something that is never omitted:
the smell that the earth gives off gratefully.
He is a poet, narrator and cultural manager. He is a Student of Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of El Salvador. He published many poetry books, like La muerte llegará (Artesanos & Editores, El Salvador); Un lugar donde espero no morir sin conocer el odio (Incendio Plaquettes, Guatemala); Vaho (FlowerSong Press, Estados Unidos), and a narrative book. He also participated in anthologies and literary events.
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