A Word Poem by Reva Kern

When suddenly in the middle of life
a word arrives never before pronounced
a dense tide we seize in our arms and begin
a big trip between the magic just initiated
that rises like an immense shout
to store abandoned
when the moss blankets the walls
between the rust of forgotten creatures
that inhabit a world in ruins,
a word enough,
a word
and begins an unhurried dance
that carries us among a thick dust of cities
until the stained glass windows
of a dark house of health,
to patios where soot flourishes
and dwells in thick shade,
humid shade,
that gives life to tired women.
No truth resides in these corners
and, however, there surprises the silent terror
that fills life with its vinegar breath -
rancid vinegar that runs through the wet pantry
of a humid house of pleasure.
And neither is that all.
There are also the conquests of hot regions
where the insects watch the copulation of the guardians
of the sown field that lose sound
among the cañaduzales
without bounds
furrowed by rapid irrigation ditches
and opaque reptiles of white and rich skin.
Oh, the care of the vigilantes
that loudly bang oil cans without stopping
in order to frighten the accursed insects
that enter the night like a promised vigil.
A walk by the sea quickly forgets these things.
And if a woman waits with her thick white thighs
open like branches of a flourishing one-hundred year old tree,
then the poem comes to its end,
no longer having a sense
of a monotonous train of turbid fountain
and always renewed by the tired body of dissolute gymnasts.
Only a word
A word that initiates a dance of a fertile misery.

This is a translation of the poem UNA PALABRA by Álvaro Mutis