Of Swallows and Dreams

From the book Ballads and Self-Portraits

Translated by Amanda Castro

Somewhere

(I don’t know if it was a Monday in August)

I wrote banalities

About fall in Bloomington, Indiana

And her streets and the fresh breeze whipping

My face

While I walked through whirling dry leaves

Sometimes

I invented heroic lives or unfortunate ones

And I contemplated without fear

The swallows angered by the twilight

In Bloomington, Indiana

Somewhere (a Monday in August)

I sensed a girl, María Elena,

Who would come from the South

I abandoned myself to that bliss

And I loved her before her arrival

And then I missed her smell

Of recently showered gardenias

And I never understood why in the afternoons

I despair

Just as the same as I never understood

The hands holding the guts pouring out

From a deep wound

Somewhere

I carry a dream of swallows and dry leaves

And sorrow

that I can’t hide