Un hombre muere en algún mundo por el puño
de un árbol, más que por nuestro amor.
Cuando yo era pequeño, se labró un músculo en piedra
de su mineral
para ser perdonado.
Y sin embargo, ante el saludo de los pájaros, amé la labor,
su respiro, que escribía con la mugre
de nuestas ansias.
Llueve como septiembre en este mundo. Tengo más
por su desgaste.
¿Quién soy yo para ser suyos en este siglo
compulsorio, sino un padre, pero sin posesivo?
Amé. Amé. Yo amo. Tengo su bandera insoslayable. Ese oficio
para nosotros como fósforo en el frío en un cuarto de septiembre
con nuestros huesos blancos, húmedos
por la melancolia. Queda más nada que hacerlo
vuestro. Esperaba con mi lámpara para inventar un pájaro
para ustedes e impulsarlo
como cuando pequeño, para entenderlo, como el agua fresca
que me dejó las manos.
—enero 2018
A man dies in some other world by the hand
of the trees, more than by our love.
When I was young, muscles were carved from the stone
of that mineral
to be forgiven.
And yet, by the greeting of the birds, I loved the work,
its respite, on which I wrote with the dirt
of our fears.
It rains this September in our world. I’ve gained more
from the wear.
Who am I to be yours in this compulsory
century, but a father, without possessive?
I loved. I loved. I love resently. I fly its unavoidable flag. That trade
is a match for us in the cold, in a room for September
and our whitening bones, humid
in our melancholy. There’s nothing more to do but to make it
yours. I waited with my lamp to make a bird
for you, and then release it,
as if I were a child, but to understand it, like the fresh water
that washed over my hands.
—January 2018
From The Life Assignment (2020). Reprinted with permission of the author and Four Way Books.
—
Ricardo Alberto Maldonado was born and raised in Puerto Rico. A graduate of Tufts and Columbia University’s School of the Arts, he is the author of The Life Assignment (Four Way Books, 2020), a finalist for the Poetry Society of America’s Norma Farber First Book Award, one of Remezcla’s Best Books by Latina or Latin American Authors, and Silver Medalist for the Juan Felipe Herrera Best Poetry Book Award. He is also the translator of Dinapiera Di Donato’s Colaterales / Collateral (National Poetry Series / Akashic Books, 2013) and coeditor of Puerto Rico en mi corazón (Anomalous Press, 2019), a bilingual anthology that raised funds for grassroots recovery efforts in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. He is the Academy of American Poets’s President and Executive Director.
