Mask

For César Vallejo

Behind the silencehides tremendous painThere won’t be a replyStone has fixed time into nothingnessYour ancestors’ bloodhas been penetrated by airWho knew, on a rainy evening in Paris,whether or not the person who diedwas an Indigenous American sonThere, he was doomed to have no blessingsOnly sorrow, poverty, and hungerThe ceremony no longer existedOnly the soul of the departed speaking his mind at dusktransforming death into immortalityThe mask will never be a miracleyet the story it conveys to usfinally made the world seethere was a pool of tearsin the depths of the Andes