Author’s Note: This poem is a translation and interpretation of “Cuando el miedo es el pretexto de los sueños” by Yanira Marimon.
Fear,
a trite word.
The diamond of daily chaos
taunts my loss of better days,
returns to me in tattered memory
timeless as a rotting carcass.
Fear escaping fear,
of being left alone in the wilderness, among tombs of
orphans’ childhoods
and without reminiscing.
Fear the frost in my eyes when the sunset announces itself
of the short maternal stay with the world
of the absence of light and of mothers.
Fear the improbable happiness, a ghost delighting in silence
and the bony digits of skeletons,
abandonment of God, for all is mine.
Fear the haunting whispers of the dead
their reflecting stares in the mirror
the mocking mask of their years, their throes of anguish.
Fear becoming someone else, of that poem in which I name and leave myself
now vacant opulence must dress in rags.
The dust of a city that is collapsing in my hands
without howls
moans
nor sanity
Fear the morning mist
while autumn leaves descend
and others impersonate tiny evasive gods,
From the place in which we lay our heads,
the only place of absolute freedom
where we exorcize at night—as if they belong to us—
Every one of our dreams.
The way you capture fear not just as an obstacle, but as a *pretext* for unrealized dreams really stuck with me. It made me reflect on how often we allow uncertainty to disguise itself as practicality.