La victoria / Roberto Bolaño

Victory

You can’t be safe anywhere
You’ve examined your possibilities and now
You’re in the abyss waiting for a stroke of luck

Dolce stil nuovo of coldness, doing this
Your actual body won’t go anywhere
But your armored shadow might flee

Now your possibilities are called none
Since you no longer brag about having met danger
Nor will a stroke of luck turn on this lamp

You exist within poetry’s secret
And now you can’t be safe anywhere
Neither in words nor adventure

Behind your promise hides Promise
A child will travel through wars again
In the reflection of your imaginary coldness

Beloved even by danger, your instant
Of absolute abyss arrived look over there
Amidst the trees your shadow lifts a corpse




{ Roberto Bolaño, La Universidad Desconocida, Editorial Anagrama, 2007 }