YOU MUST LOVE SOMEBODY Comments

for Juan Felipe Robledo and Catalina González Restrepo
You must love something or somebody:
the pile of ruins that surrounds you
the sirens that announce war
the relatives who tell you stories of rancour
and then charge you with the expulsion of paradise.

Love women, all of them,
the unknown one
the one with the perfect face
the deformed and hunchbacked
the ones that go away with their suitcases intact
the ones who are always another's.

Surely love will some day have the exact recipe
and we shall know why the fog stayed in the open
of lost kisses and embraces never made
and why laughter sometimes resembles a lent garment
too big for us, that never fits us,
that smells of alien skin in its pockets.

One must love with its multiple wounds
and its stock of haemorrhages and slow recoveries,
one must not be afraid of its burnt papers
nor of its amulets and lucky charms for each appointment
nor the sobs that left the bedroom empty on the last day.

You must love someone every instant of your life
even if tied to a piece of star.
Don't delay the dawn's arrival to these lands.

A hard trade and rare matter love is
but today it takes many notes for the joy
the morning you see now before your eyes
was stopped in the same orb centuries ago
waiting
with the same haste of the words
at the time of reaching one's body.
...
Read full text