I live in a workers neighborhood, in an old house, in slippers,
and on the same table where my father at night
cuts the pants that he must have ready the next day
so that the nine of us can all sit at the dining table,
so that the roof doesn't collapse in the rainy season,
so that the shoepolish of decency shine on our feet,
I write my hermetic poems, I turn grammar upside down,
and I aspire to possess a world I cannot have
and read Paul Valéry and Tristan Tzara.

This table where my father has brought forth so many woollen cloth pants
has also felt my absurd words running along its back,
since it was lit with a Coleman lamp
until now when I curse it with my intellectual spittle.
Its immemorial drawers are still good for keeping scissors,
seventy centimeter tape measures, notebooks with clients' measurements
who today will have children of the same size, samples of English woollen cloths
previous to the invention of fashion,
and the crevices in its wood have been filled with chalk dust.
My childhood was conducted between its legs
contemplating my father on the billiard table of his work
with so many illusions about my growing up.
My education was paid with loaves of bread that time would multiply.
But I grew up in indifference, in the lazy sun, in dreams.
Only the legs of love, only the cups of laughter, and
on the mattresses of nihilism did I lose the feathers of my wings.

I write hermetic poems, but from time to time I think.
I think, for example, that all of this must change,
that we must smile the length of the living room to the kitchen,
that we must be on the side of life like plants in tin cans,
and proclaim victory under the shower of splendorous mornings.
So that my sisters will not be ashamed when they are asked on the street:
"What is your brother doing?"
"When is he going to shave his beard?
"If he is so intelligent why doesn´t he work in a bank?
Because the devil made me a poet so that I would burn still alive.

Buses pass swiftly bound for the war of the day
raising terrific clouds of dust that come into the house
through the windows, through the roof, through the cracks in the door
greying the hermeticism of my poems and my readings.
I sneeze like a good bourgeois who has caught a cold at alpine heights.
I blaspheme then and go out onto the street in my bathrobe to rest
and watch many barefoot children with coffee sieves chasing
the butterflies that the rainy season has sent,
and I see a dog running after motorcyles
or raising a hind leg at dried up fire hydrants,
and I see many men digging furrows on the street with shovels
to plant more modern and powerful sewers.

The lady that gives injections passes by with her unstitched bag
and says hellow to me how are you young man how's your mother
and my mother singing and singing in the kitchen before a pile of dishes
or my dirty shirts which she still tenderly caresses.

A boy comes to the door to ask me to sell him an ice-cream
drawn by the notice that Estrella pinned on the window.
I tell him the refrigerator is broken
(the truth is I am too lazy to sell it to him).
And the boy goes away with his cropped head
receiving the yo-yo of the sun going up and down in the firmament
and a rubber ball thrown at him from the next street.
How to find words that say something that is not anything?

On the corner several shoemakers polish shoes on a lathe
and the sweat of joy trickles on their shirtless breasts
and I fancy sitting by their side to listen to them talk
about little things, about their families, about glue,
boxing champions, the girls in the "Tunjo de Oro",
but I'am afraid of boring them, besides I know they're in a foul mood
with me because they think I am a good-for-nothing and an out and out loafer.
The young girl who works in the Sears store studies English
and wears a red skirt too tight for her age
hurries out onto the street to wait for the bus gives me
a smile as if I were already dead.
From the carpenters
drifts the odor of glue, of shavings that fly in the air,
and the circular saw sings while making school desks.

There are so many things to look at in the street,
the nests on the electric wires, the rat
dead since Saturday on the Friday newspapers,
the shopkeeper snoozing under his parasol
his whiskers bombarded by flies,
the construction worker laying down curved tiles in the new house
and shouting to his assistant to bring him up his hammer,
in this atmosphere it is impossible to be a hermetic poet, I say,
what kind of a poet am I so moved by life,
so I put on my slippers and I go into the house to go to bed
because soon the school boys will come out with their slingshots.

Translation: 2006, Nicolás Suescún