Stained Glass Pains of Exile

All the efficacy of names
that the imaginary laboriously fabricated to fascinate you
silently falls apart:
a rich cemetery of ashes
this is today your geography

You learnt at the expense of your youth
and the better part of your innocence
that being alone in a bereft suburb of the pampas
or in lavish Samarkand
bears the same dimension of forgottenness and tragedy;
the wind never took the pity to scatter
the stones and the dead; only the tourists of somberness
photograph themselves before colored panes

because to say country is to utter just one word
behind it the density of secret combinations
headstones belonging to strangers who bear our name
and faded photographs that preserve the echo of your passage
towards love or despair.
It is also the memory of wearisome jobs
or perhaps some old melody
that holds on to the first risks of your youth.

A country is a name
and with acid violence it lends a word
to your defenseless traveler’s mouth.
It is a map with a river whose estuary and source
come together, curiously, at the exact point on earth
that your ossuary wishes to fertilize.

It’s these daybreaks, insomnias, greetings, anger,
an arm, a man, nicknames, insults,
farewells, gardens, encounters, tremors,
promises, autumns, rails, challenges,
absolute nouns that allow no
other explanation for their ghostly weight:
these and not others.
© Translation: 2019, Philippa Page