The eightieth year of my life is as far away
as the moment I was born.
In the distance, the clocks are erased,
but tonight I open my home to my friends,
I want them all to come
to celebrate at my side.
Only my biographers can be exact
with shady magnifying glasses.
And although their astuteness may correct me tomorrow,
I fold my age over their horoscope
and anticipate the future sun.
It’s best that way: the gods are stingy,
I don’t know how much I have left.
Tonight I suddenly grow old,
maybe it has not snowed on my temples,
I am from a country without snow.
Life rolled so long between my bones
that it has has weight,
age made me light,
it settled me with emptiness
without becoming wise,
—my eighty years are not so many.
Only the magnifying glasses of my biographers
will restore the figures of the days
until they fix the quantity of shadow
in their quadrants of ash.
The eightieth year is an imprecise limit
in which I see and don’t see myself,
it is so far from this time,
so uncertain,
that although no friend is missing
maybe I’m the one who’s absent.
But someone (I could swear I’m looking at him)
will memorialize me, raising some glass
in spite of the silence, the solitude, death.
And at that instant I will be him,
and his belief about life
is my belief;
even if he has not yet been born
and he is separated from my home
by leagues of sea and dust clouds of path,
I know he will not miss my birthday,
I invited him to my party.
as the moment I was born.
In the distance, the clocks are erased,
but tonight I open my home to my friends,
I want them all to come
to celebrate at my side.
Only my biographers can be exact
with shady magnifying glasses.
And although their astuteness may correct me tomorrow,
I fold my age over their horoscope
and anticipate the future sun.
It’s best that way: the gods are stingy,
I don’t know how much I have left.
Tonight I suddenly grow old,
maybe it has not snowed on my temples,
I am from a country without snow.
Life rolled so long between my bones
that it has has weight,
age made me light,
it settled me with emptiness
without becoming wise,
—my eighty years are not so many.
Only the magnifying glasses of my biographers
will restore the figures of the days
until they fix the quantity of shadow
in their quadrants of ash.
The eightieth year is an imprecise limit
in which I see and don’t see myself,
it is so far from this time,
so uncertain,
that although no friend is missing
maybe I’m the one who’s absent.
But someone (I could swear I’m looking at him)
will memorialize me, raising some glass
in spite of the silence, the solitude, death.
And at that instant I will be him,
and his belief about life
is my belief;
even if he has not yet been born
and he is separated from my home
by leagues of sea and dust clouds of path,
I know he will not miss my birthday,
I invited him to my party.
Eugenio Montejo (1938 - 2008) Venezuela
Translated by Arthur Dixon
Source: LALT Vol.1 No. 7, August 2018
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