Lauren Mendinueta

1977 / Barranquilla

Nocturnal In Death

Is there no change of death in paradise?
Does ripe fruit never fall?
Wallace Stevens

Do not press so eagerly to live!
Death erases memory.
Henceforth the past no longer exists.
Looking back
Is forbidden to us, the dead.
Death is the only prospect.
Endless march.
Concerning light,
An astonishing hidden form
Bids us follow it along a path
Conceivable only to lifeless eyes.
We are pilgrims searching for a paradise
Which expands.
The past is an
Insatiable
Black hole that devours minutes.
This is what constitutes eternity
To forget at every turn
The pronounced judgment of permanence.
You must be made aware in due time
That this tedium of being is eternal
Just as the continuation of the poem
Is infinity itself.

Translation: 2010, Constance Lardas
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