Eduardo Cote Lamus / Two Poems

TWO POEMS

By Eduardo Cote Lamus
BIOGRAPHY

Translated by Laura Chalar

YOU

Your word falls into loneliness like an olive branch
into peace. I did not know
that your voice would arrive with stars.
You are my war cry
against death.
Now a tree grows where oblivion
closes its eyes.You.

JUSTICE

I suffered the light, had a forehead
like a newly-made morning;
then came the shadow and planted in me,
without my noticing, the bitter sign:
words would thereafter be
a vision of the world pulled down
in dreams; one must sing
because a new Cain is being a poet.
I sold myself as a slave in order for
my master to govern my actions;
it so happens that love made me more alone
and my master couldn’t bear his guilt.
Lazy freedman, yes, manumitted
from myself; a shadow I am of what is real;
but neither can I realize
what is happening around me.
The bad thing is feeling the dream pass
through eyes and chest
and not being able to tell what happens.
Yes: for this word I am writing
I will be later tried, executed;
no defence against death will be
my task of telling, of saying things,
this dying in each word, this
seeing ashes where life is.