COUNTRY OF SILENCE Poem by Pedro Arturo Estrada

Someone dares to ask after him who has not returned.
And the shadows answer: nothing, nobody, no one.
Someone wanders sniffing the last steps,
the moans he left in the air, the voices that still
creep in under the doors. Someone
under the damp sheets of midnight
can't get to sleep, waits until the high
desolation of dawn for that news, that now, that enough,
that final cry which will reestablish the course of days
and unleash the voice over the void
dug by years of silence
and fear.