SHADOWS OF TEPID SOULS
Toño Guede
I see them carpeting the city,
trees of fading dreams, creators of ephemeral shadows,
compact objects that walk under the Sun
with a lack of wings in their dreams and heaviness of reality in their bodies.
I see them inhabiting the limits of that sanity called present.
And sometimes it hurts them when they breathe the city.
It makes so much ice on contact with the mannequins!
Their gazes are the nothingness of absent eyelids.
There is no light in their mouths when their voice emerges.
There is so much nothingness surrounding their skin!
Inside and outside their limits
As if a coffin-like dermis clothed them before the life.
I just crave a little warmth of lips
to cure me of loneliness.
But in the herd I see
looks of condemnation
For seeking fire in the arms of others.
I feel so empty in this forest
Of spectres of ice and emptiness!
Something shines in my eyes
that drives away the mannequins
at the breath of my voice.
The city is cold. The sun is cold.
Reality is cold.
Like moving stalactites
the mannequins advance
directionless towards the sunset.
Beings fleeing from the present
dressed in the plastic wrapping
made for their souls.
They gather inside a nightmare of hope.
It’s the stubborn drizzle of desperation
of eyes accustomed to seeing chains.
Salty, frantic, useless rain,
which will bring these links the ancient rust
and gradually eat away at them.
They breathe as if each breath signals
imminent death.
They speak with razor edges in their eyes
and every word is a dagger that cuts ice.
They walk with lead in their souls,
sinking the bridges that unite hope and reality.
There are no more seconds in the soul
to find reasons
that encourage to breathe once more.
I walk through the wrong world,
like a lost actor
inside a non-existent script,
unable to leave
from within the fog of reverie
to step into reality.
Alienated, estranged, gone, on the margins.
And while
the mannequins become statues, walls,
obstacles that precipitate the misfits
to hell.
He is the author of six novels, five written in Spanish and one in his mother tongue galician (Só ficarán cinzas en algures (Editorial Galaxia). He is also the author of the poetry book Bolboretas na memoria (El taller del poeta). Together with other writers he has created an association Círculo Poético Ourensán that is dedicated to promoting literature in the educational institutions.
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