Bogotá

They stop on corners to greet each other
to plot, to mutter, and predict
next week’s profits.

Nothing tells them about the signals of death
that punish the streets
nor the smell of the hunched soul
that exhales the trough middays
of March.

Life bumping around
and the thief and the minister
Sleep adream
that has lasted already four centuries.

Only the crazies, crawling over each other in the plazas,
are happy.

Traslated from Spanish by Rebecca & Juan Carlos Galeano