Alfonso Kijadurías (El Salvador)

Por: Alfonso Kijadurías
Traductor: Bud Flakoll

The Future

When the notion of the Flood was allayed.
A.R.

Morticians set up shop in the streets.
From the slaughterhouse the stench of a thousand butchered
                                  beats inundates the morn of our
earliest childhood.
Blood ran in the circuses and ships.
In the house of God. In tall buildings still streaming
the children contemplated strange images.
The blood poured. Gunpowder salesmen, arms traffickers
celebrated the profitable event with pomp. In the Minister's
house the general embellished Iphigenia's thighs.
The black sun exploded on the Triumphal Arch. The queen,
the high priestess, who had always hidden the future from
                                  us, at last said that the end of the world had
begun. But this time there would be no boats waiting.
The sea was dry. All was ruins, misery, tempests.
Saint John's visions burst from the eyes of the animal
                                  with a thousand heads.
The hare didn't appear that morning nor did the rainbow say
it's prayers through the spiderweb. The future
                                  had scarcely begun.

Alfonso Kijadurías was born in Quezaltepeque, Salvador, in 1940. He has lived in Madrid, Paris, New York and Vancouver, working as a translator and other occupations. He participated during two decades next to the poets of the so called Generación Comprometida in publications such as La Pájara Pinta. He obtained several awards for his poetic work such as two serial honorary mentions in the Casa de las Américas Awards in 1969 and 1970 for El otro infierno and Sagradas Escrituras respectively. Some works: Toda Razón Dispersa, Antología, 1998; Reunión, Antología, 1992; Obscuro, 1997; Es Cara Musa, 1997. He has also written works in prose from Cuentos (San Salvador, 1971) to Gravísima, 1967-1991, 1993; and the novel Lujuria Tropical, 1996.