The Students Poem by Piedad Bonnett

The healthy, spirited students of splendid smiles
and velvety cheeks, the ones that light a dream in another dream
and breathe the air like newborns,
those that look for corners better to make love
and sweetly eternal play Russian roulette,
the avid and crazy and fervent students,
those with tender necks ready under the sword,
the girls that show off their sunbathed thighs
their bust, their navels
perfect and innocent like dark corollas,
what is of them
what will be of them tomorrow
what hole
yesterday swallowed them up
under what rough, sad
withered skin
do they survive

Translation: 2005, Nicolás Suescún