In memory of my father
The night thickens with nails,
with walls of silence.
He has died of cancer.
You dress him in a vegetable skin:
it is the porous bark of acorn trees,
or the black rain of windows,
of motionless statues,
black and motionless.
The lungs are black like dead irises,
purple like dead calla lilies,
the weeping of tidy stars
the pins of throats.
Death is to strip oneself of red flesh,
be a metallic grimace,
a broken tree,
a small eye of an ant.
Death is silence,
toughness of thorns.
There is no more possible pain.
A hole so large that it is the color of gray,
the gray of silver,
monotonous blue,
windows of water.
A hole so large that it does not hurt,
because the lung was as large as the world;
it was incomplete and transparent,
a linear smile,
or a silent heart.
Translated by Alexandra van de Kamp
Angela Pérez Ovejero was born in Talavera de la Reina (Toledo) in 1961. She has a degree in Spanish Philology from the Complutense University in Madrid and has taught at the University of Milán (Italy). Her reviews, articles, literary criticism and poetry have appeared in numerous Spanish and Italian magazines and journals. Her poetic work includes El ángel triste (The Sad Angel) and Umbral y luz (Threshold and Light). She currently lives in Madrid.
Opinions expressed in Terra Incognita are not necessarily shared by all or any of the editors.
La revista no comparte necesariamente las opiniones de los colaboradores.
