CARLOS ARREDONDO
ENCOUNTERS
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Where do these sharp, hastening footsteps come from that fall on me so urgently?
And where is she coming from? So happy and proud and determinedly
immune to all my smiles.
Is she, or is she not, a woman - so untouched by my desire to see her that
she disdainfully pretends not even to pretend
not to notice that I've seen her?
Half aware of me,
close now, sharp I'm like an idiot,
who's crushed between his ears.
My girl! My little girl! My darling!
My Paloma!
I become absorbed in my own forms,
with my tropic of joyful fingers
bounding and crying out
for a guitar.
These are confused emotions,
and nothing else,
the feelings
of a father
buried in a thunderstorm.
that touches her, moves her and
in the mathematical space which separates us,
without rejection or sirens in the street,
she interrupts, in my honour,
her lovely, rhythmic songs.
Ecstatic,
I come alive.
My girl! My little girl! My darling!
My Paloma!
And so,
as her final footstep halts to receive my kiss,
without avoiding my smile
she opens her gentle lips and I hear the words: "Hola, papá!"
The desert blooms, world poverty ends,
Hell fills with angels and I,
for once, am - and remain perfected,
piled up in her embrace.
My eyes are wings that shelter her,
from evil - or from the rain and, from within her beating heart,
she kisses me softly,
so that, tonight,
I can sleep soundly.
Edinburgh, May 2004
Translated by John Gillies
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