I know of the sea breaking against a wall
how it scares me when its swell rises too high
when its waters grow cool and it is impossible.
I know of good people crowded on bridges
I contemplate their crystalline gaze and mine turns to glass
my coastline eyes, my coasts
keep sickening me.
I have seen from a balcony
a river that divides three countries
I have often opened my door to greet
strangers
I drew out a new tongue
I sat down as far north as possible
I was on the last street of a country
I was as insular as I could be
I have put all my faith in a journey
I have wanted to return and embrace
I run behind a new landscape that crumples in my eyes
I live fleeing from this place I am
but the uprooting doesn’t cure me
doesn’t cure me.
The first suicide is unique
They always ask you if it was an accident
or a firm determination to die
Miyó Vestrini
The first escape is unique
they always ask you when you’re coming back
keeping in mind the repeated path
some claim for themselves deeper distances,
silent and senseless.
When the escape becomes a totem
a custom of the sad
there aren’t many questions left
it doesn’t matter when you’re back
there here beyond
opacity if you come back
The first escape is unique
then absolutely everything succumbs to the mirroring of distance
and everything is longing, mi-mi-mi
everything nostalgia, bla-bla-bla
Excess remains
the grimace of those who assume forgetting when they say farewell
impassable languages of goodbye
the most invalid force of embrace.
The first escape is unique.
(from Estatua de sal y otros poemas [Statue of salt and other poems], 2017)
Translated by Arthur Dixon
