Funeral song
Translated by Urayoán Noel
So
The other night I was at a funeral, in Zacapa
“Now we’re exhausted,” I told
The polite audience who chose to listen to me
“On account of hunger, of the weight of elders and the lightness of children
But above all, on account of so much flightlessness
That we’ve just about had it. Always
Traveling, always confused, we knock
On the doors of the well-to-do
With our fatally wounded hands”
And I said more—a whole lot more
But outside of the family, not even a word
We used to have a proud heart
and the highest resolution in the face of windstorms
But now it’s time to say
“Stay cool, little head of mine, stay cool”
A few weeks later, another funeral, now on Fifth Avenue
The deceased was a woman named Sánchez Rosales
Sharp as a spear, her image
Collected the clear patina of our doubts and anxieties
“Don’t cry for the dead,” she said
“Or for the disappeared. Cry, instead,
For the living, for their cousins and brothers
Murdered in front of their door”
And she offered some solutions—in fact
Many solutions of the unpleasant kind, what can I tell you
We used to have a proud heart
And plenty of thick skin for the inclement
Weather and the madness of man
But now it’s time to say
“Be patient, urn of mine, be patient.”
Translated from the Spanish
Notes:
Read the Spanish-language original by Wingston González, “Canción de los funerales.”
Source:
Poetry
(November 2022)
