This month, we have the honor of presenting a single poem by Juan de la Fuente Umetsu, poet, journalist and editor born in Lima, Peru, in 1963. After reading it using an informal translation (read: Google translate) of the poem, I asked my partner to call her mother, a pianist who also happened to be a native Spanish speaker from Lima, Peru. Together we went over each line and I had a greater appreciation of the poem. This piece is evocative and beautiful and I hope to be able to introduce it to more languages in the future, so that more readers can appreciate his work. In the middle of our afternoons here on the west coast of the United States, under a sky full of fire, it was a pleasure to read the dreams and calls galloping from the imagination of Juan de la Fuente Umetsu. Enjoy...
—traci kato-kiriyama
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Juan de la Fuente Umetsu (Lima, Peru 1963). Poet, journalist and editor. Recognized in the Municipality of Lima (1981), Manuel González Prada (1985) and El Poeta Joven del Perú (1985) competitions. He has also earned distinction in the 1990 and 2007 versions of the Copé Poetry Prize. Author of the poetry books Declaration of Absence (ASALTOALCIELO, Editores, 1999), Las barcas que se desdede del sol (Tranvías Editores, 2008), La beauty no It is a place (Carpe Diem, Editora, 2010), Bridges to cross the night (Paracaídas Editores, 2016) and Vide Cor Tuum (Perro de Ambiente Editor, 2017). His work appears in various national and international publications, such as Peruvian Poetry of the 20th century by Ricardo González Vigil (2000), Mobile Waters by Paul Guillén (2016), Report of the Third International Poetry Festival of Lima (2016) and Fugitive and eternal (anthology of the IV International Poetry Festival of Madrid 2018).
Horses on the rooftops
All night the horses have wandered on the roofs
Interrupting the dream that we no longer dream
All night and every moment, as if it were a lifetime
They have galloped to the edge of the abyss
And the abyss has galloped over them all night
But they didn't ask for anything
They demanded nothing
They just wandered around the rooftops as if there was no sky above
And below only the rough traces of his steps expelling the void
All night someone saw a musician come back from the dead
And leave a song on every door
To a naked actor in front of a mirror who didn't recognize him
To a wounded boy running through the streets to reach a heart
A girl woke up a hundred years ago on a train that was sleeping
To my mother calling us all behind a door
And to you, statue of wind
Exploding sound
Returning clock
Staircase that climbs its own steps
To stay suspended in my path
On my way all night the horses screamed something
What did you say in your dreams?
And the windows opened to receive the message
And my mother called us again from the other side
And we were no longer here
We only heard his voice all night
Because there is a moment in a man's life
In which he does not know if he enters or leaves reality
He has already tasted the taste of bodies when they stop dying
And he has known the exact place where the skin fades
Until forming a temple
In memory the flowers have the same color
That when we cut them and steal their beauty
The terrible thing is what you know but you can't understand
All night the horses have wandered on the roofs
I see a lost street in the body of a man who has just left
They say he hasn't died
that will return
Who just went to the corner store for a couple of blue cigarettes
To forget about him a little
a little bit of everyone
And throw their ashes into despair
One more movement and the world creaks
Like the leaf of a tree that hits the forest
All night the horses have been searching for something without knowing it
And without knowing it all night we have heard his silence
They have entered the swamps of dreams
And they've sunk a little deeper than usual
We don't know what it will be like next time
We are still asleep
Without hearing anything
without feeling anything
We have not yet entered death and we have not left life either.
All night the horses
They have tried to return to us.
And the night has expelled us all.
*Published on April 2, 2020, in La Ninfa Eco magazine , UK, interview by Gisella Ballabeni. This poem is the intellectual property of Juan de la Fuente Umetsu.
© 2020 Juan de la Fuente Umetsu
