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To My Mother
Carved from silence was your voice
and lives in me, everlasting.
In the unperceived blue vein of your hand
our destinies, accomplices,
quietly slid by.
I sensed it.
And in the ancient trail of your dark laughter:
mute question of pyramid and clay.
How much did you know of what silence suppressed?
Why did you conceal the tempest descending
upon the incessant struggle of your people?
Since what eternity did you learn forgetfulness?
The same one learned by those in vigil
under the millennial white crosses
in the furtive night of the owls.
Not a murmur of complaint
amidst the day’s chore,
flights of girls,
prayers, novenas, Sunday walks
and holy days,
You seemed like a skylark disguised
as a housewife,
castaway sylph of melancholy song
among furniture and dust,
coal in the gaze.
Tender remembrances and sleepless nights
exchanged with the obsidian of your hair,
and your youth vanished forevermore.
But for me you are the new moon,
unfading in my memory
and in my dream that you always watched over,
much like the suffering eyes of this people
now, in silence, keep watch.
(Translation: Edwin Agustín Lozada)