Estoy rodeada de sombríos aires / Antonia Palacios

I’m surrounded by somber airs

I’m surrounded by somber airs. They suffocate me and silence my words. They are words from distant times, when the roads were spacious trails and I would travel them in a transparency that was granted me by chance. Everything seemed at hand and distant. They were times of lucid summers, of trees where birds of vivid colors would build their nests and from the earth rose a warm vapor, a silent fog that would settle over the patio. Windows with balusters seemed to protect a dense quietude that kept the screams and wails very far away. Today I’m sharpening the ear to listen once again to those secret words I hadn’t yet discovered, they would arrive, burning and trembling at a previously set hour. They came and went. They stopped for a fugitive instant that barely contained my breathing. I evoke them this afternoon of dark airs and feel how they deny themselves to me.




{ Antonia Palacios, Ese oscuro animal del sueño, Caracas: Monte Ávila Editores, 1991 }