The Desert of Atacama V

By Raúl Zurita b. 1951 Raul Zurita

Translated By Anna Deeny

Speak of the whistle of Atacama

the wind erases like snow

the color of that plain

i. The Desert of Atacama soared over infinities of

deserts to be there

ii. Like the wind feel it pass whistling through the

leaves of the trees

iii. Look at it become transparent faraway and just

accompanied by the wind

iv. But be careful: because if ultimately the Desert

of Atacama where not where it should be the

whole world would begin to whistle through the

leaves of the trees and when we'd see ourselves

in the same never transparent whistles

in the wind swallowing the color of this pampa

Source: Purgatory (University of California Press, 2009)

Biography

Raúl Zurita is one of Latin America’s most celebrated and controversial poets. After Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 US-supported military coup that ousted Salvador Allende’s democratically elected government, Zurita’s poetry sought to register the violence and atrocities committed against the Chilean people and the corruption of the Spanish language. During the dictatorship that lasted from 1973 to 1990, Zurita published a trilogy of . . .

Continue reading this biography