I’m not much, just barely
these blue days
this legion of nobodies
and this childhood sun,
trace of ruins.
The herds break with the silence
of the bells. It is Corinth.
We walk the town, preaching
the pallid hope, the compass rose.
We are alone. We erase ourselves
into the hidden memory of things.
Aimless, with only dogs following us.
What does it matter if Daniela and everything else are lost?
Night falls on Ephesus.
Isn’t that where the apostle wrote
that light and passing
anguish? I read
in everything that surrounds me
the signs of downfall.
I search again in my pockets. Nothing:
wounds, blows, open sores,
disjointed words, objects
forever detached from their names.
There is nothing, there is suspicion
of distant lights in the gulf,
signs perhaps imperceptible
which faintly, gloomily attest to
another possible reality
yet unlived, foreign, unapproachable
just now, one sky passes
and beneath the dark thrush
the icons gaze at us, indifferent.
Alí Calderón was born in 1982 in Mexico City. He is a professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Puebla and the co-founder and editor of the literary magazine Círculo de Poesía.
Ramón Flores Pinedo is a PhD student in the Latin American and Iberian Cultures program at Columbia University.