Te he seguido... / Emilio Adolfo Westphalen

I have followed you...

I have followed you like the days pursue us
With the certainty of leaving them behind along the way
Of one day distributing their branches
On a sunny morning of open pores
Swinging from body to body
I have followed you like we sometimes lose our feet
So that a new dawn might light up our lips
And then nothing can be denied
And then everything can be a small world rolling down stairs
And then everything can be a flower bending into itself over blood
And the oars sinking further into the auras
To stop the day and not let it pass
I have followed you like the years are forgotten
When the shore changes its appearance with every gust of wind
And the sea rises higher than the horizon
So as to not let me pass
I have followed you by hiding behind forests and cities
Wearing the secret heart and the sure talisman
Marching over each night with reborn branches
Offering myself to every gust like the flower lays out on the wave
Or the hairs that soften their tides
Losing my eyelashes in the stealth of dawns
When the winds rise and the trees and towers bend
Falling from murmur to murmur
Like the day sustains our steps
To then get up with the shepherd’s staff
And follow the floods that always separate
The vine that’s about to fall on our shoulders
And they carry it like a reed dragged by the current
I have followed you through a succession of sunsets
Placed on the display counters of stores
I have followed you softening myself with death
So that you wouldn’t hear my steps
I have followed you erasing my own glance
And silencing myself like the river when it approaches the embrace
Or the moon placing its feet where there’s no answer
And I have kept quiet as if words couldn’t fill my life
And I will have nothing else to offer you
I have kept quiet because silence puts the lips closer
Because only silence knows how to detain death at the threshold
Because only silence knows how to give itself to death without reservation
And I follow you like that because I know just beyond you won’t pass
And in the rarefied sphere the bodies fall just the same
Because in me you’ll find the same faith
That makes the night tirelessly follow the day
Since eventually it will grab it and won’t release it from its teeth
Since eventually it will stretch it out
Like death stretches out life
I follow you like ghosts stop being such
With the relief of seeing you tower of sand
Sensible to the slightest breath or oscillation of the planets
But always on foot and never further
Than on the other side of the hand




Abolición de la muerte (1935)




{ Emilio Adolfo Westphalen, Otra imagen deleznable..., México DF: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1980 }