Incident [Suceso]
Translated from Spanish by Reginald Gibbons
We weren’t there when it happened.
We were on our way to another city,
another life,
under an ever-changing sky that moved as we moved.
We crossed green countrysides, yellow ones,
towns of wary people and impassive crows,
and not once did we miss our own home
or feel nostalgia for the past.
That’s what the trip was like:
silence at night,
fog in the morning.
Once I found a metal button in my pocket
and I played at holding it up to the sun,
flicking bright reflections into ears of wheat.
Later it was a worn coin
and we had free passage through every border.
The plains of Europe were our witness.
They too know that something happened,
even if we ourselves never saw it.
We went our way to another country,
another life,
without flashy bags,
no space for memories.
At our backs, everything gave in—
silence now, later fog.
[2009]
