Miyo Vestrini

Born 1938 in Nimes, France, but lived from childhood in Venezuela, chiefly Maracaibo and Caracas. Well known as a journalist and essayist.  Miyó Vestrini committed suicide in 1991. Books of poems published: Las Historias de Giovanni, 1971; El Invierno Próximo, 1975; Pocas Virtudes, 1985, Valiente Ciudadano, Todos los Poemas, 1994.

Spanish Text

THE WALLS OF DEATH IN SPRING

I will not teach my son to till the earth
nor to smell ears of wheat
nor to sing hymns.
He will know there are no crystalline streams
nor clear water to drink.
His world will be a world of hellish downpours
and dark plains.

Of screams and groans.
Of dryness in the eyes and throat.
Of tortured bodies that can no longer see or hear him.
He will know it's not good to listen to the voices of people
                                    that praise the color of the sky.

I will take him to Hiroshima.  To Seveso.  To Dachau.
His skin will flake off bit by bit at the horror
and it will hurt him to hear a bird singing

                                the soldiers' laughter
                                the firing squads
                                the walls of death in spring.

He will have the memory we did not have
                                and he will believe in the violence
                                of those who believe in nothing.

 

THE SPARKLING THICKNESS OF THIS PLEASURE

Sometimes
it's the limply sleeping woman
that waits.

Stranger to frenzies,
she sleeps on her side against the wall.
She dreams there'll be no more nights like this:
no one will arrive in the small hours panting liquor
                                                                            milk
                                                                                 sweat.

She dreams only the bearable part.
Other times
it's the man that waits.
He waits for bruised and battered women,
blows of fortune while they cling to him.

Someone always waits.
But docile and single,
joined to what begins and dies at the same time,
they know in advance the sparkling thickness of this pleasure.

 

LIZARDS

There are men
                        who lift up the sheets
                                                       and enter.

No sweet frenzy
no warmth or melancholy
no spells.
                  They're lizards.
                                       Outcasts.
                                                     Wretches.

 

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