Where is Raul Zurita in the Gem City?

Over the cliffs of the hillside: the sun

then below in the valley

the earth covered with flowers

Zurita enamored friend

takes in the sun of photosynthesis

Zurita will now never again be friend

since 7P.M. it’s been getting dark.

 

Night is the insane asylum of the plants

                                    from Sunday Morning

~ Raul Zurita (trans. Anna Deeny)

This place where poets carve poems
out of slabs of brown and grey marbled

ice knows nothing of deserts

rich in copper wealth, nor anything about rich
fertile earth where exotic grows from trees, but it shares

the same misery as the narrow strip of land possessing

the bounty of volcanos and lakes. There is a lake here
too, but it’s not one of South American beauty

suffering from stupidity of human

rights violations. Our lake has a wealth of atrocious
human history too. There is a snowy Caravan of Death,

but it isn’t one with living breathing asesinos, rather it is

one of rust, one of rock salt eating away every person, all the scrap
metal in its path, while chasing after a gold dust

trail. In the north we suffer a different Misery. The lake we take
time in poisoning has diminished the name of the fair

Gem City. We need to find our own Raul Zurita.

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