Three poems by Jorge Etcheverry

The Young Ones

 And the flower of the race let fall this generation like many clear petals on the dark earth and the old ones grew hopeful, living their last days, seeing with pleasure and without words the movements of these new youngsters who trained themselves in living

 "The Chains that oppress us will in time be broken by our sons or grandsons, stronger than we. The winds coming from East and from West will fecundate their actions and thoughts, like other common winds that all day swell the sails of the boats"

 But the blood covered the cobblestones like a kind of moss, like this parasite of the elm tree, when the most audacious and beautiful of this new flock got ready to start up vertically, like quail

 And hope like a flower of paper burned on the chests and extinguished below the closed lips of those who were starting to look at things with new eyes.

 Some of our best offspring had the luck to die very young

 This had made us more careful with the rest. The marshes that surround the city are a breeding ground for decease

 

The Rebel

 He was the fairest among us, the one bearing the clear irises and the dark deep pupils, where all our secrets could be drowned, all our fevers could be cooled

 He was the finest man among us. He dared to speak un in the market and at the temple. He molested the concubines of the legislators, he snatched the purse of the tax collectors

 He was the daring man in our region. After accomplishing his feast his head was put a price on it, the posters with the head and the price were posted on the walls. He was run out of the city with guns and dogs

He was the hardest among us. He borne the cold and the wind, the early rain and the sun as melted gold. He was almost skin and bone, as the peasants who came from the mountains to sell at the market told us

He was the loneliest man on earth. His words were not even listened by anyone. It seems that his brain was melted by the ray of the fate as soon as he was born. Even the traits of his face were eager to fly from our attention. Some among us even said he never existed

he died as a dog, the miserable, the doubly cursed, when they came asking for him we have already forgotten him. When they asked what he said to us, we discover he always spoke a foreign language

There was a man that dwelt among us for a time. Now he is gone

 Silhouette

The man yawned, lying along the sidewalk of the street that was in reality all streets, either branching off or going infinitely ahead

The man, still lying sideways, rested his head upon his elbow and directed a brilliant eye toward the stars: the Three Marines, Alpha Centaurus, the Orion Constellation

The man tapped with his fingers the ground stretching under the limited length of his body, without giving him support, without showing him the way

The man closed his still tumescent hands, filled with the liquid of dreams

The man could feel his mind being filled with volcanoes of colour, with the muddled and multiple ways of the present, where each step is like walking on shifting sands (this is the law of the times)

The man felt his brain swelling with a sudden flux  of blood that caused him to recall the fragility of his life, precariously  enclosed inside his ribs, pulsing through his red muscle like an infinite pump

The man thrown upon the sidewalk, dressed in rags, smelling like an animal, saw the images of a past, populated with feminine voices, of pure skies crossed by birds, on a coast where they mixed with the turbid visions of the present, full of empty roads and intersection

The man thought: "Let them progress along bright avenues, speaking in tongues they can understand, voicing opinions all will stop to listen to"

 

Do not stop for even a second in front of houses to which you have not been summoned

Do not exercise your step or the joints of your legs on  streets walked by others

 Behind every pupil is a hungry dog

 Behind every woman's lips, separated and moist with a sweet sap, you see a set of fangs of irreducible ivory

 You cannot even look toward the stars that circle over your head, while you conceive plans, theories, schemes in which you are inlaid among your fellow men like the gems of a crows

For you there is no destiny under those stars, now paling before the rising sun that offers the chance of food and growth to even the most dismal herbs

After the dreams in which you speak with people who articulate    the same (nonexistent) language

Acknowledge the inexorable dispersion of all meanings

Like chess without rules and countless pieces, the everyday world stands in front of you

Lock yourself in at this hour wearing the armour of the vegetable men

As of this date, you will not add your voice to our chorus not even in the guise of an experiment

Go back to sleep at the edge of the sidewalk, your head upon your bent elbow

Go back to your own forest instead of awakening to a world that has banished you