I Make My Way Through the Deserted City

by Lucía Estrada

At its corners,
there’s no movement to recall
the drawn-out breathing of other days.
Not even air brings news of its dead.
I walk along the secret shore of things
and in them I see myself, in their coat of dust as if to shield them from their own fate.
I think of the men who are now sinking tepidly into sleep. To what uncertain sea do they surrender?
What wind propels their ships? To what port are they pushed?
Dark the moment when my memory tries for a phantom dialogue reflected in stone,
in the vigil of the dispossessed.
Long, silent,
like the death not uttered by these streets.

Translated by Olivia Lott

Lucía Estrada

Lucía Estrada (Medellín, Colombia, 1980) has published the verse collections Fuegos Nocturnos, Noche Líquida, Maiastra, Las Hijas del Espino, El Ojo de Circe (Anthology), El Círculo de la Memoria (Selected Poems), La Noche en el Espejo, Cenizas de Pasolini, Cuaderno del Ángel, and Continuidad del jardín (Personal Anthology). She won the Medellín Poetry Prize in 2005 for Las Hijas del Espino. Her texts have also appeared in various anthologies and publications, both within and beyond Colombia. For several years, she helped direct the Medellín International Poetry Festival. She received a poetry grant from the city of Medellín in 2008, and in 2009 she was nominated by UNESCO for Macedonia’s “Ponts de Strugas” International Poetry Prize. That same year she won the Bogotá National Poetry Prize for La Noche en el Espejo.

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