Trópico absoluto / Eugenio Montejo

Absolute Tropics

      Blue and white palm trees
sharp marine sun at the shores of the coast,
iodized wind, naked bodies, waves.
I’m contemplating this land as if I were seeing it for the first time
or were about to leave it.
I cling to it, celebrate its ancient desire
in each rock, in each little pebble.
It’s the same landscape modulating the voices
so many times heard in cities and villages,
the same sun that was burning
in the absorbed retinas of my parents.
I’m not sure if I see it from another world
and wander absently now
dreaming through the air.
This light epitomizes for me life and death
in a beam of floating colors
that my silence draws in letters for me.
In this light the false pearl of the thief,
the dark girl with the turban who crosses herself,
the street urchin’s rags,
the alcatraz, the cicada, the noise of the salt marshes,
all align in a vast rainbow
where the magic of the absolute tropics
grows in a scream in the depths of my blood.




{ Eugenio Montejo, Trópico absoluto, Caracas: Fundarte, 1982 }