The city never sleeps,
its groans resound through blackened undergrounds,
its miseries drift across the gray asphalt,
there are hunger-wearied souls in virulent pits,
hidden corners tremble with rejection,
the sirens of the Law or of the doctor wail,
and in the feeling mind that suffers this spectacle
fears lie awake.
Beneath the cold illumination of the night
young flesh begins to fade away,
the mask of pale ivory
becomes the puppet's grim caricature.
In the sleepless city, night reigns supreme:
the casino, the brothel, the den
of sex and greed, the feverish
spiral of vice and reckless waste.
Beneath the darkened bridge, in poverty,
sick, rejected and oppressed,
the outcast is a dreadful moan.
Above the avenues, wealth
sells the devilish and forbidden fruit
that turns a free man into one subdued.
The city awakens,
noisily sorrowful; caravans of dreams
dig spurs of ambition into its flanks;
the sun radiates harshly with a metallic tone;
the sweltering air brings longing for wheat fields;
its opaque windows are faces of reflection,
and in towers without battlements it offers the citizen
an iron slavery.
Sterile discouragement, inside the car
rolling along the single lane
toward a false, unjust, hostile world,
forms the hard frost of reproach.
Upon arrival, one must fasten tight
the cloak that shields the youthful
spirit nested in the virile
effigy that died the previous night.
Children and the elderly, in sadness,
inhabit cobwebs without heartbeat,
prisoners in the nets of oblivion.
In the city of stone, frailty—
that cannot harden its skin like cured leather—
is orphaned of both name and surname.
The city grows and grows,
with concrete claws it squeezes memories dry,
opens mournful tunnels toward shadowed horizons,
builds loneliness, geometric tombs,
gathers ashes of motionless chrysalises,
hides its refuse in filthy wastelands,
and in monolithic cells imprisons illusions
with shackles of steel.
Emma-Margarita
R. A.-Valdés
Traductora:
Vekas Rodica
