The Name of the Game — (1956-1958)

Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
 translated by Hardie St. Martin

I Sit Here Like an Invalid

I sit here like an invalid in the desert of my desire for you

I’ve grown used to sipping the night slowly, knowing
you’re in it somewhere filling it with dreams.

The night wind whips the stars flickering in my hands,
broken-hearted widows of your hair, still unreconciled.

The birds you planted in my heart are stirring and
sometimes with a knife’s cold blade
I’d offer them the freedom they demand to go back to you.

And yet I can’t.  You’re so much a part of me, so much alive in me
that if I died, my death would kill you.