André Salmón

The roads to oblivion are many.

Many are the changing facets
of this music that always sounded in your fragile flesh
with such ancient and well forgotten tunefulness.

The roads to the cities your sad eyes saw
are sonatas on old pentagrams.

These poems, longer than any life
should recall that at one time you lived among them
since you learned that the earth doesn’t exist
and that a fish can do nothing if it breaks its fins.

But your heart is wider than Germany and
France put together
and from Montmartre to Montparnasse
there remains only memory
in its gravity
and when the train entered the underground station
you truly saw people dancing between the rails
and the sky was a landscape
and the wind pulled the trees’ hair.

Dear André Salmón
with the name of a fish
Teleosteo fisostomo
a meter and a half long
spawning in Autumn rivers
and migrating to where they nourished warriors.

Dear André,
you have grown old brooding over deceit.

Traslated from Spanish by Rowena Hill