I Still Don’t Know Your Name
I still don’t know your name
or any facts or details
about your life.I never saw the photographs
which showed you
with your bright eyes,
in which I guessed would be
a secret masculine warmth.I still haven’t met your family,
your tree, your trunk, your root
or the one who was your flower, your wife,
Cecilia, mother of that little girl
you talked about in your delirium
when you were dying.I registered your slow death, your agony
and mine, feeling you die
in that way, in that place
where my martyrdom consisted
in having no hands, no voice, no power,
no freedom
to bring you the water you asked for,
let alone get you out
and take you to somewhere in daylight,
where life was still possible.I remember you raving,
destroyed, bleeding, burnt
by the electricity they tortured you with,
insinuating into your body
small powerful spaces
of death.You had a fever. You couldn’t hear. Or see.
You were one great heap of pain.
A bleeding pulp
that still functioned,
like a thrown out machine
about to grind to a stop.On the morning of the third day, they came.
I did not see them but I heard their voices, footsteps.
They decided you weren’t to speak.
They quarrelled like wolves, hyenas or jackals
for the right to exterminate you.A shot sounded sharp in your chest.
Terror overcame me.
Still in the small hours
of sleepless nights
I remember you.You were made of light.
[London, August 1991]
Translated by Dinah Livingstone
Page(s) 72-73
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