BOGOTÁ, 1982 Poem by María Mercedes Carranza

No one looks at another face to face
from North to South distrust: suspicion
among smiles and careful politeness.
Dark the air and fear
in all the doorways and the elevators, in the beds.
A loose rain falls
like a deluge: world city
that will never know happiness.
Soft smells that look like remembrances
after so many years that are in the air.
Half-done city, always on the verge of looking like something
like a girl that begins to menstruate,
precarious, with no beauty whatever.
Nineteenth-century patios with geraniums
where very old ladies still serve chocolate;
tenement courtyards
inhabited by dirt and pain.
On the steep and always crepuscular streets
- an opaque light as if filtered by seedy alabaster plates -
scenes as familiar as death and love take place;
these streets are the labyrinth where I must walk and retrace
the steps that at the end will be my whole life.
Grey are the walls, and the trees,
and the air from the brow to the feet of the inhabitants.
Far off the green exists, a metallic and serene green,
a Patinir green of lagoon or river,
and behind the mountains it may be possible to see the sun.
The city that I love looks too much like my life;
the weariness and boredom of living together unite us
but also the irreplaceable customs and the wind.