Đ 2005 - 2008 Per Contra: The International Journal of the Arts, Literature and Ideas.
And I Had Lost Granada
When I went off to
study in Quito
I took
my hometown Loja with me in my bags
like
someone keeping eucalyptus leaves among his clothes
to
remind him of the freshness of the forest.
In
Quito we went on living and drinking like Lojanos
and
thatīs how I became such friends with the father of the blond
who
lived across from the dive where we ate
and
where on Saturdays Viennner-Sport would flow like a river
that
red-neck beer as the Quiteņos call it
but the
only one within reach of our shocking thirst and squalid pockets
I was
such friends with the father
that
the golden girl didnīt want me
and she
became one more beauty in the well of shipwrecked desires
a
little more wood for my heart to be tempered in its flames
it was
around then that I committed for the first and last time
the
treason of opening the letter of another for the honor of a friend
worse
for him the letter confirmed his fears
and my
heart started to traverse the mirrored room of life
to
learn that labyrinths are not only in the head
and that the Minotaur
stalks within us all
we
sensed even more
that
confusion would persist
and
that it is better not to enter into darkness unless
you have at least the
light of a small lamp
and the
cruelest thing of all, that the other may be innocent
Freddy,
the poet, in any case must have been /all poets are/
on top of that his
musculature did not invite violent clarifications
and
that the things of love one suffers or enjoys but cannot argue.
already a lawyer
I left Granada behind
I said goodbye with a long alcoholic lament of several days
during which I drank with successive generations
arm-wrestling with the younger toughs
playing the guitar with the older ones
philosophizing
poetizing
truly lingering on the threshold of departure
at the hour of the last embrace.
When I came to Guayaquil everything was already written.
And I had lost Granada.
And I Had Lost Granada by Carlos Eduardo Jaramillo translated by Alexis Levitin and Fernando Iturburu