Gonzalo Márquez Cristo (Colombia)

Por: Gonzalo Márquez Cristo
Traductor: Nicolás Suescún

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

RESTITUTIONS

     I expect that everything lost become a poem.

     Wounds, like hurricanes, have a name. And even though I ignore why abysses are born around me, since the origin I was sullied by happiness, by its inclement summit.

      The invading subtractions of remembrance. The root's struggle. The antiquity of silence-

     I don't lay down flowers in the cemetery of dreams, but I go on in spite of the quicksands of the spirit.

      The blame that does not allow you to leave is love.

     And now the fog, the rain, absence-

     The imbalance called beauty, the terrible orphanage of the sacred, the igneous rose guiding me in desperation-

      I know the road will finally find me.

      As everything that becomes visible in order to die.

GONZALO MÁRQUEZ CRISTO was born in Bogotá, Colombia, in 1963. Author of Apocalipsis de la rosa, 1988; the novel Ritual de títeres, 1990; El Tempestario y otros relatos, 1998; La palabra liberada, 2001 and the anthology Liberación del origen, 2003 and Oscuro Nacimiento, 2005. Founder of the cultural magazine Común Presencia 1989. Maurice Blanchot International Essay Award for La pregunta del origen. Creator and coordinator of the international collection of Literature Los Conjurados, distributed in five countries. "Ritual de Títeres (Ritual of puppets) is a fight between philosophy and image that leads luckily to tragedy" (E.M. Cioran). “Apocalipsis de la Rosa is, in my opinion, a valuable example of what poetry should be… I am specially attracted to his sense of fundamental contrasts, his pact with surprise, his containment of language, his natural boldness to cross limits, the projection of silence that there is in his words, the search for sight and illumination instead of devices or maneuvers that only dazzle the unwary". (Roberto  Juarroz). This voice never subdues itself to the meaning of existence, be it metaphysical or social, because it´s shout has an elemental and uncertain strength, vibrant with blood, that turns into a liberating word, poetry. (Antonio Ramos Rosa).