JUAN GARRIDO-SALGADO
The Dilemma Of
Writing A Few Verses
The dilemma of
writing a poem without light,
without the
amenities of paper and ink
Without the
digital keyboard
but with memory
correcting each verse
like a clock
tired of telling the time,
a fallen rhythm
into language
in the calm of
the dawn.
Only then,
re-reading it
from the blue
caressing
the dew on the
glass in my window.
Only printing it
in the flight
of the last
waking dream.
Look Back To
Where The Wound Is
(Volver la mirada
donde está la herida)
Look back to
where the wound is
and let the day
clean it, let the night lick it
with shadows that
come to surround you with calm or pain.
The open wound
arrives like a clock from the past
anchored in your
bleeding skin between the bones
of what you were
yesterday, tangled up today.
The dry word on
numb lips.
Breathing is a
cascade of howls falling,
through the
blood, through the open sides of the skin.
“When a star
sinks into a black hole”. Ernesto Cardenal read
this verse to me
before I left his Managua.
Life Is A Table
Set Up
For Us To Live
The Day
1
I wait for the call of your green leaves
Lorca’s rushed
canto
of that fruit
which will come
floating in the
mystery of water
in the depth of
roots
who kiss the
light of day
on the lips of
the father sun
We are fruits of
those warm aromas
that feed our
souls
and make us love
the simple mystery
of each verse
growing in the broccoli
from the garden
where I live
2
a dry leaf falls
in the verse
the ink moans in
its texture
giving the winter
a melody
the rain tunes
its violins
the verse gives
me a silhouette
rolling like a
tear on the window.
JUAN
GARRIDO-SALGADO
JUAN GARRIDO-SALGADO immigrated to Australia from Chile in
1990, fleeing the regime that burned his poetry and imprisoned and tortured him
for his political activism. He has published eight books of poetry and his work
has been widely translated. He has also translated works by a number of leading
Australian & Aboriginal poets into Spanish, including five Aboriginal poets
for the anthology Espejo de Tierra/ Earth Mirror (2008). With Steve Brock and
Sergio Holas, Garrido-Salgado also translated into English the Trilingual
Mapuche Poetry Anthology. The book When I was Clandestine was part of a
poetical tour at the Granada International Poetry Festival in Nicaragua, Mexico
and Cuba (La Habana City) in 2019.Hope Blossoming in Their Ink (Puncher &
Wattman) in 2020.
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