The war is over. And as if no one had ever died
the swallows keep turning from the windows into god’s silence

while in this century, blind, forgotten, nooned into submission,
into shadow like a ghost laid into the mortar

I barter with them: bury me, the blades of my shoulders
in the blue altar & I’ll come clean.

I’ll drink from that well. I’ll leave.
To the deer: let me go unnoticed,

let me watch as you take from the earth the seed of your stone.
I’ll give everything back. Light as a brushstroke

I’ll veer into the 21st century: to the noosed skid-marks
& laughter. That life. That city, catacomb, steel & glass

for bone. Mine. All that I am heir to: hupcaps, carbon,
cardboard & pavement; my father’s body

his crown of fog. Before I must claim that
impermanence, if it is any different from these hours,

I would like to walk the broken stones once more
here, alone with the ghosts & the silent living,

freed, as death frees us from history, within history
& in near silent ruin.

Andrés Cerpa

< BACK | NEXT >

TABLE OF CONTENTS