Una palma / Eugenio Montejo

A Palm Tree

                                                            to Ramón Palomares


      What I look at
in a palm tree
is not a leaf or the wind,
nor the savage caryatid
where color appears
to glimpse horizons.
It’s not the bitter rancor
of the rocks
nor the green guitars
of the inconsolable sea.
Some of my bones, don’t I know,
the blood that drop by drop
and man to man
has been rolling for centuries
to populate me
somewhat too of my beloved dead,
their voices,
rotates in its column
and adds me to the air.
What I touch in it
with my eyes
and look at with my hands
the root that binds us
to this deep land
from a dream that’s so strong
no storm
can displace us.




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