The Oblique Suns

por Nora Perusin

for Rosario Chavez

Returns have something merciless about them
burials, neighboring voices,
the face on the mirror
is a lamp that burns the memory.
When we were children we sucked on oranges,
behind the perfumes of the jacaranda tree
we threw the pits to the other side of the world.
– the teenager’s gestures ran from the
personal diaries to the midnight pumpkins-
We armed ourselves with the foreign language
to name the names of things,
paradise was so easy
it was so easy to sit at the “taverns”,
thieves whores and travellers
drank wine, handfuls of bread
and scattered water.
With Rosario Chavez
we had these conversations
in the oblique suns of Leningrad.
From the racconto of an unfinished story,
to the crossing of the Swiss and Italian borders
we saw the Mecannos decrease
the obsession with missiles
the fatherland as a boat jammed after a drizzle.
They dispersed our memory
the blood that is coming and will come through roofs and terraces
Florence sunsets in the Tucumán sugar canes
the volatile sky.
The airports grew accustomed to the passion.
There are things that are left behind
when we look sideways miserably
at the cities we have died
in the light of candlesticks raised inside the
grocery stores. We were tea-drinkers
between blinds in mid-afternoon
and sudden steps.
Now the stain of humidity
is the stain of humidity.
Now the landscapes are a blind film.