El poema / Hanni Ossott

The Poem

Will you be writing tonight?
                    –Mrs. Carmen asks me
I don’t know if I’ll be writing

I don’t know if the cosmos will come to me
I don't know if the serpent will enclose my body
And spray me with its thirst.
I don’t know.

The night is clear
          –after the rain.
And my love is scattered...

I don’t know if the poem will come.

There are lights, yes
cantos
profound cantos
there is the humidity
the rain that rains from within like my tears
from the profound and the depths
it rains, rains.

Edgardo, the ghost
the boyfriend no longer loved, appears
for nothing
like the rain
                    –now a stranger
                    –for nothing.

Now indifferent to me
arrives
without interest
to memory.

                                                                   October, 1991




El circo roto (1996)




{ Hanni Ossott, Antología poética, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 2006 }