Poetry
Shadows

Shadows

Sombras

Silvia Eugenia Castillero

Translated by Tanya Huntington

Daytime traffics

in digressions, the growth of night

on walls, night when it is no longer night,

night on the verge of becoming thread, perimeter

of every shadow.

One by one, bricks and plants are stained by truths;

aimlessly, they grow astride the cement.

Unequivocal bodies, sterna, pelvises,

bones but no souls; there are some lips and legs

but they are far too secret, there are no thresholds;

there might be a chapel

of strange characters, half-truths

are heard, yawns;

the hushed shadow makes its way among the stones;

at half-light, the rumor of that dull instant rises

half-closed, half a cloister,

an effigy halfway.


***

We met

In a tunnel made of hexagons, remember?

You were headed for the dividing line

between your own hive and the outside world.

You passed by smiling, honey on your lips,

from center to axiom, from vertex to perimeter.

The cells were trunks, insurgent in their struggle for space.

I saw your smile and dawn, your touch

you toured the hexagons one by one

filled with skin again.

At dawn, the hardened stone

stored a trembling of leaves deep down,

a murmuring of air, the unstable green

your presence left behind.


***

Acacias

I drew closer just where you left the lamp

A useless monolith, but it allowed me to see beyond

the curtain of wilderness. Then I saw your arm

curved over the horizon, fragile over the alkaloid flowers,

elongated and red: bloody pansies, they call them.

Your dismembering arm clasps the running wind, it smells of gods;

Acacias attend you.

 

Silvia Eugenia Castillero has authored: Entre dos silencios, la poesía como experiencia, (Tierra Adentro,1992.)and Aberraciones: el ocio de las formas, (UNAM,  2008). Her poetry books include: Como si despacio la noche, (Secretaría de Cultura de Jalisco, 1993); Nudos de luz ( Universidad de Guadalajara, 1995); Zooliloquios, (Indigo Editions,  1997) and  Zooliloquios. Historia no natural. (CONACULTA,, 2004).

 

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