Fabricio Estrada (Honduras)

Por: Fabricio Estrada
Traductor: Nicolás Suescún

PROMETEO
Latinoamerican Poetry Magazine
No 81-82. July 2008.

KINSHASA MEMORIES

I come back to Kinshasa, my love,
a sweet paranoia that I repeat
in each flight coming back from dreams to the day.
In the full bliss of the climate
I tap the drum of Summer
I drive into the walls, with lances,
my human collection of birds.

The sun, sick, suppurates,
the village grows and is consumed by itself,
nothing unknown to my eyes,
Babel of termites or statue of dust,
but happy the look to go back to you,
oh, abandoned one-
Your Medusa tangled hair
poisoning everything,
the pressure of the fire
and the panic of the lover seized with unconcealable
desire in the burnt out parks,
in the destroyed hotels,
in the delirium of ashes in place of snow. I have come back, my love,
trained in your hoop of fire,
like the sweet pachyderm of amnesia,
I salute you, oh Kinshasa,
you most Serene
August Capital of Central America.

II
In Kinshasa there is no rain left.
The tribe dig holes in the hills and look for wineskins
"that some say" are full under the ground.
Thus they lose their hands and sleep,
they open enormous furrows
they mark with bones and chew roots
until they dry them out.
A constant buzz is the word
and the village grows in uncontainable octagons,
a ferocious structure
where they keep the brief history of their time. No clouds go by in Kinshasa,
only, an endless storm of locusts
that do away with the roofs
and the meager flowers
everyone has begun to call hopes.

FABRICIO ESTRADA was born in El Salvador en 1971. Books Published: Tarde de Martes, (Tuesday Afternoon) 2004; El Día Interminable, (The neverending day) 2004; Una Primavera Muy Larga, (A very long Spring) 2006; Breve Historia del Alba, (Brief historia of Dawn) 2007 y La Habitación, (The room) 2007. He has received, among others, the Adonáis prize for Poetry, 2006 and the national poetry awards CONCULTURA, 1996, 1998, 1999. As stated by Francisco Andrés Escobar: “…Jorge Galán´s poetry must be read with citizen gratitud.  When the country sounds in the orchestra of nations, it does from the atrocious instrument of violence, it can not do less than thank who, amongst the screaming and fear, the fanaticisms and deceits, pulses his work as a poet, bringing international awards to his people, such as the Adonáis Prize, given to Jorge few months ago in Spain. (…) With a high capacity of seduction, it is a poetry that comes from a long study of the history, theory and technique of poetic expression. A poet is made by vocation and formation, as said by Lorca. In Galán, this is unavoidable. His talent - that came from God or Biology, or of God through Biology, however it may be- has an additional value: the untiring study of the instruments of the poetic art. The poetry of Jorge has depth and sonority. The first virtue comes to him from authentic feeling; the second, from his accurate handling of verse, in its different meters, and his control of the poetic procedure to raise, with words, effective images and metaphors... "