Bucephalus
By the river of any given city,
a rider looks over the dirty photograph
where Bucephalus and I stick our tongues out at him.
The buildings that were full of people are empty now, he’d repeat,
while Bucephalus reminisced over my face
how the girl that inhabited my dreams used to live in one of them.
By the river of any given city,
we, the speedy comrades,
break up the time
to invent new horizons.
The little I learned from life was to know how to fall
Saint Paul St. 5 pm
Bucephalus and I, all powdered up,
freshen up in the waters to get over the shock
I met Bucephalus the day that mom
pierced his tires with a kitchen knife
to prevent me from falling in life,
the noisy streets of the city’s sector number seven,
in which the grass had already stopped growing.
A few years later with the same knife
I started to cut my fingertips
and offered my blood in little containers
hoping to descend to the basement.
Bucephalus and I have walked different paths:
He… hidden in a basement’s darkness.
I… running away from cities.
Bucephalus and I have walked the same path
because running away from cities is
nothing but hiding in a basement’s darkness.
Against all odds, we survived.
Now, Bucephalus and I walked from city to city,
we face the windmills on the roads
singing a song in freedom.
(Translation by Dr. Vicent Moreno, Arkansas State University)
