XVI

Selected Poems of Juan Gelman
translated by Hardie St. Martin

XVI

            What really hurts me is our defeat.
            Exiles are tenants of solitude.  They may correct their memory, betray, disbelieve, conciliate, die or come out on top.  In this last case, they looked at their face as if it were theirs: it was filled with traitors, disbelievers, conciliators, the dead and also those compañeros who died with faith and burn in the night and repeat their anmes and won’t let you sleep.
            To make you see the distances no one lets you sleep.
            You rattle your bones, you.
            So be it.