Poem in Spanish

By Mónica de la Torre Monica de la Torre

The grave has more power than the eyes of the beloved.

An open grave with all its magnets.

This weight on the wings. The sky is waiting for an airship.

I have the feeling that I haven’t got much life left.

Three hours after the celestial attack.

Why don’t I respond when I’m being offended?

Because my religion doesn’t allow me to.

Exterior maps: geography. Interior maps: psychography.

And in your hard cathedral I kneel.

Mountains pass camels pass

like the history of wars in antiquity.

Of all the men I am, I can’t find any of them

without the control of the intruding eye.

Problems. Mysteries that fasten themselves to my chest.

All I want is not to see businesses nor gardens

nor markets nor eyeglasses nor elevators.

In order to serve all radio listeners,

without discriminating between social classes, I speak a tongue

that fills hearts with the law of communicating clouds.

I have my brain or whatever it is full of skull moths.

For the world to go on being what it is it must

—per force—take another form.

True poems are fires. When something cherished burns

instead of the fireman I call, rushes forth the incendiary.

It says: live, live, live!

It is Death.

Source: Talk Shows (Switchback Books, 2006)

Biography

Poet, translator, and scholar Mónica de la Torre was born and raised in Mexico City. She earned a BA from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México and, with the support of a Fulbright Scholarship, relocated to New York in 1993 to pursue an MFA and a PhD in Spanish literature at Columbia University.

With dark humor, de la Torre’s poems explore our constructions of identity and trajectory. Her poetry collections include . . .

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