In Honor of Yourself

Let’s say that tonight you have been happy.

Because just for tonight
you have returned to yourself at the time when you were wearing
the best clothes in your memory
poor memory
full of winters  come back to stay for ever
in a country that was not yours
all mixed up with memories of bodies you never
knew
nor what they tasted of
after three in the morning.

May poetry bring, to this other woman writing now
the best of the gifts she never received.

Tonight you have retraced the wandering paths
you used up in search of a music of paper and words.

Tonight
you have found the image of decay
under the embrace of an old volume
in a language no one cares about.

Tonight
you will see again thirsty lips
and dry lips too
and another body that will come for you among the sounds
of a sea that was neither
malodorous nor sad
but only the sea of your fourteen years.

Does it really matter if while everything remembers
and comes back you’re no longer there?

Today may be the dawning of any
day in your life
and the songs a woman is singing in Spanish
repeat that everything is habit and indifference
while you sing in honor of yourself.

A vain homage to many things
and episodes of the time you lived.

A record of your actions
this poem
will bear witness to this unforgettable night
when you were happy
once again,
you
who knew nothing different of the past.

Traslated from Spanish by Rowena Hill