On the obstinate
Luis Benítez
From 1984 I just remember one thing: 
the deadly autumn had already collapsed 
upon the sidewalks the day after the summer, 
with all the weakness of its strength imposing 
itself like a gray ink copying 
itself on the blotting paper. 
It seemed to be Eternity and was merely 
a season, as ever happens to us: 
the municipal saws had once 
again defeated the trees, dismembering 
the ones already vanquished in 
the humble Roncesvalles of deserted streets.
Someone was washing the sidewalk, 
but I only saw the petrified wood 
turned for ever into the insignificant, 
minute detail of firewood. 
Among the many shades of the chestnuts 
loosely piled up at the edge of the streets 
there was a green point, only one, 
at the end of a branch even months later, in winter. 
Entangled, near it the tatter of a newspaper 
announced the beginning of the war 
finished a few days before, 
the ascent of an already anonymous minister, 
and the plot, by then clarified, 
of a robbery and a resurrection.
Nothing kept anymore its ancient significance 
neither in private nor in public like the dry firewood 
and the roots deprived of their old foliage. 
From that mighty autumn only that stroke 
of green persisted, absurd, obstinate 
at the end of a broken branch.

Luis Benítez
De "Selected Poems" - (antología poética, selección y traducción de Verónica Miranda)
Ed. Luz Bilingual Publishing, Inc. Los Angeles, EE.UU., 1996.

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