Origin

— I —

My mother suffers
from a chronic stomachache
and I long ago have learnt to spend the afternoon;
and although the wizards didn't take my destiny,
it was from a far away dream that I came to the sea.
Quiet, still, I appear in the tiny shore
where the swallows stop to pasture.
In the blood of a martyr I condemn myself daily
with the forehead struck by the breeze.

My mother suffers
from an acute stomachache
that embraces her now and then,
and, with the hands grabbing the rosary
hasted she emerges to encounter me.
I, conversely, lack tactfulness
and I lay on her issues with disdain,
as she holds hopes
and I don't hold anything but forgetfulnesses.

In the amnesia of her breasts
I discover the ambar of death
and the pain of having been without wanting it.
I don't hear the rumble of the ground
or understand the ways of the waters,
but she's a mast of dark cedar
with the hands tied to the silence.
I just fall myself in abysses.

There was a time in my childhood
in which I was good:
I am old now
with the fine offspring of my chains.
When I was absent from the roses,
and when I was away from my mother
I was a light bird with tired feet.

And I remember there was a moment
of lonely chores,
and my mother then started
her pains
in the garden with sun and mint,
and there was no one else to take care of her
and no one else learnt about her failure.
Yet she is good and sad,
with small scared eyes,
and every night she comes with me
willing only to love me.

It is late now, light sleeps.
I count the years in the bed
and everything seems a doubt and a pipe dream
and my mother stopped feeling her pains.

Between my mother and what I have learnt,
a flamed goose rises.

— II —

Father,
make room in your bed for me
because it is cold.
Coldness comes body to body
in the last sphinix of desire:
fire doesn't look for you
and the image in the water is fake.

I am looking for my mother in your eyes
and I only see a dead woman.
I go through your wet places
with the fragile coin of my lips.
My mother is so pale
that your arms have already forgotten her.
And it grows.

Everything grows year after year,
shadow after shadow.
Mystery dwells in the memory,
in the life there is a hidden monster.
The last tower will be your lips
a kiss from a Judas who grows anger,
for the christ that breaks your bowels.
Everything is announced.
And passes.

Father, there my mother is before your knees,
sheltered in the word of your right side.
Mother, there you have my father:
strong man, with the weakness of the wind,
small man, fantastic scary foreman.
Today it is the party of silence.
Look back to the petrified salt,
change your way: bitter, uncertain,
be transigent, cut and silence the whispers.

I met my parents so long ago,
that now it is little the salt and the morning.
There are no more deserts for the world.
Who silent in your deserts
are wax statues of the enigma.

Father, Mother and Holy Ghost,
the Son is the offspring and the deception.
Next to me there are two bodies,
rotten, they burn in silence.
One is the sea that doesn't sing,
other the mirror I broke.
Both bodies melt
in the uncertain tide of the gods.

The bed is empty.
Coldness is inside my body.
This night is different.
Father, mother, where are you?
My hand shakes
in the darkness of their dreams.

© Gustavo Solórzano


© Gustavo Solórzano Alfaro writes from Costa Rica, and took part with this poem of the first Heptagrama poetry contest.


Arts and expression + Poetry