I want to say what will never have words.
And always on another stage
–it’s always another stage–
the unspeakable ebbs, pursuing an inviolable silence.
Between the fish bones and the weather you shoulder,
el darno explains: throughout montevideo and its bitter sea.
At forty, in foreign cities
perhaps engrossed in writing’s snare
perhaps plump and contemplative in glasses
looking for better images, simpler ones,
more ambiguously elusive
to say the same thing,
and from afar
always farther off and better said:
the fish bones and the weather you shoulder,
montevideo and its bitter sea.
*El Darno is the nickname of Eduardo Darnauchans, an Uruguayan singer and songwriter. The italicized portion comes from his song “El ángel azul” (The Blue Angel).
Paola Gallo was born in Montevideo in 1980. She is a master’s student in modern letters at the Universidad Iberoamericana Ciudad de México. She has participated in literary festivals in Montevideo, Bogota, Mexico City, Madrid and the Festival Cervantino in Guanajuato, Mexico. She wrote the literary study El decir de lo indecible: los rodeos del deseo en la obra de Alejandra Pizarnik and the poetry collection Alimaña. Her poems have appeared in Asymptote and the Colorado Review.
Adam Giannelli is a poet and the translator of prose poems by Marosa di Giorgio published in English as Diadem in 2012. He is a doctoral student in literature and creative writing at the University of Utah and a poetry editor for Quarterly West.
