Your Country

Don’t waste time looking for your country.

Money doesn’t need it and its idiom is usury.

Your country is the tongue you inherited
and the poor stories it preserves.

Your grandmother, on the porch, her memory gone blind
rocking years of pain and misfortune.

Your mother, going deeper into melancholy and fear
Limbania, standing guard with long silences
over her sister’s wanderings,
your uncle, tied to the piece of earth that gave him
in the fullness of his youth
ten memorable sonnets
and Elisa
seasoning the essence of  the capon
boiling aromatic waters
watching you grow up a stranger.

Your country is also the vast empire of your language
and the music of those who thought in it with love.

Your country is the speeches
and small battles of Bolivar
the guilt, cold and hunger of Vallejo
Neruda and his endless collection of names and things
the memorable, everlasting games of your master Borges
and a labyrinth of blood called Macondo.

Your country will be the books you give to earth
and the happiness you offer the reader.

Don’t waste time looking for your country,
you carry it with you.

You will die with it without ever setting foot on it.

Your country is a man, a woman
and the language they speak.

Traslated from Spanish by Rowena Hill