I Wanted

I wanted to talk about life of all its melodious

corners I want to gather in a river of words

the dreams and the names what is left unsaid

in the newspapers the pains of the solitary

surprised in the nooks of the rain

rescue the leafless parabolas of lovers and give them to you

laid before the games played by a child

elaborating his sweet daily destruction

I wanted to pronounce the syllables of the people

the sounds of its grief

show you where their hearts limp

insinuate those who only deserve a bullet

in the back tell you of my own countries

impose on you from the exoduses from the great

emigrations which opened up all the roads of the world

of the love of even the bedraggled one over there

by the ditches

speak to you of the trains

of my friend who killed himself with another’s knife

of the history of all the men broken

by blindness by myth’s reefs

of the century which my three sons will outlast

of the bird’s tongue and the furious foam

in the stampede of the great four-legged beast

and I wanted to talk to you of the Revolution

of Cuba and the Soviet Union

and of the girl that I love for her eyes

of shortened storm

and of your lives filled with dawns

and of people who ask who saw you who said that

how could it’ve been done I got here

before you

and of all of nature’s things

and of the heart and its testimonies

of the last fingerprints before total annihilation

of the tiny animals and of tenderness

I wanted to yes say to you all of that and tell you

lots of stories I know and in turn were told to me

or that I learned by living in that great room of pain

and things said by other poets before me

and that are good for you to know

And I can’t give you more—closed

door of poetry—

than my own corpse beheaded in the sand.

Roque Dalton

translated by Alan West

(Picture: untitled, Zdislav Beksinski)