Colombia Today Poem by Santiago Mutis Durán

The days of the Colony have come back again:
martyred figures abandoned in the semidarkness
in the endless timeless galleries
in the rarefied atmosphere of the temples

Tense rays of light fall like darts
like choirs like presages
that all or nothing is the same

and the man - the flesh the body -
suffers
crucified to such a lie
Something loves us and destroys us
the world without landscapes without tears;
only grimaces captivity tortures
ecstasies shams hell
emptiness . . .

A caress
strips us
deforms us
damned
like a dark tender
flower
that desires and rejects us.

Translation: 2005, Nicolás Suescún