Darkness with light: it approaches surreptitiously
creeping red across the skies littered white and blue and gray.
Its beauty threatened by unruly nightfall, darkness making black its king.
There dreamed a starless sky, littered with catastrophic clouds
as wolves howl at the reverie of moon.
Blue sunsets spill their purpled vanity
against the round globe smearing shadow twilight
to its mountain greens…
But the darkness of destruction past
does not seem to settle on the tired smiles of weathered women
walking to a beaconed light,
searching for a peace of heaven,
waiting for salvation in the prayers offered by their seasoned hopes,
holding out a candle to guide their threatened path.
Oscuridad con luz: se acerca silencioso
un rojo rastrando el cielo cubierto de blanco, azul y gris.
Su belleza amenaza un anochecer rebelde; su oscuridad la negrura hace rey.
Se sueña un cielo sin estrellas, plagado de nubes catastróficas
como lobos que aúllan la quimera de una luna llena.
Las puestas de sol azules derraman su vanidad violeta
contra el claro globo untando su sombra crepuscular
a sus frondosas montañas verdes …
Pero la oscuridad de la pasada destrucción
no se fija en las cansadas risas de mujeres desgastadas
caminando hacia la luz del norte,
buscando una paz del cielo,
esperando salvación en oraciones ofrecidas por viejas esperanzas,
sosteniendo una vela para guiar ese camino desafiado aun.
“Northward Bound” / “Hacia el norte”, an interpretation, not a translation, with photograph (“Crossing a River / Cruzando un río”) first appeared in Poets Facing the Wall (The Raving Book Press, 2018). Art Exhibition: Reframing Immigration, Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrants Rights, New York City, October to December 2018.
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Ana Fores-Tamayo advocates for marginalized refugees from Mexico, Central America, and other countries from which people flee. She states that working with asylum seekers is heart-wrenching, so poetry is her escape. She has published in Acentos Review, Main Street Rag, Shenandoah, and many other anthologies and journals, online and in-print. Her poetry in translation & photography have appeared in the US and internationally. Ediciones Valparaiso in Spain published her book of poems, PEREGRINA, in June 2022. Through poetry, she keeps tilting at windmills.
