Poems by Mario Urquiza Montemayor

Translated from the Spanish by Dipen Bhattacharya

Axis Mundi

Three rooms and a patio,
populated with sounds
the tree waiting outside
remains motionless
in the center of the world.

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Poem to Read on Public Transport

Among the geometric shapes of the shadows,
the light reveals the sleepy names
and the boredom of strangers along the
path that engenders a false eternity
that goes from one station to another.

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Almagest

A word
falls in my memory

vivid transparency

falling leaf
at the foot of the tree

sways in its branches
the gazes of the stars

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A Poet

I write to nobody, on the transparent stone
the hours become palpable things, the earth becomes
loose against the wind; on the infinite paths
of the moment there are faces that I do not recognize.

The air comes to rest on the tree again
Who will come with our name to save us?
My face is lost in the gloom, my eyes
between the pulpy segments of the night, uncertain words
give warning, internal moon of my dreams,
distant stars near my oblivion
and a dream that I don’t end up remembering,
or mark the passage of this melancholic heart.

The sounds of the night are heard among the flowers
and the wind, the flowers suddenly stop
and look into the distance, will you come back?

I came to a place where your name is the fruit of
night and its transparencies. My steps that I now
invent, someone will remember in another time.

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