4

To go back to the village
and find the streets
unchanged.
The same elderly people.
The same beautiful faces
of boys and girls.
The same river
coursing round and round.
My heart
is heavy and somber.
My parents are dead
the family house
in ruins
flattened by a cyclone
of death and solitude.
All I have left is poetry
and the young men
who ask me about it
and read me.
What wouldn't I give
for my parents
to know I am loved
for what I write.

Poem by Raúl Gómez Jattin

Translated by Jaime Manrique and Dean Kostos
Published In BOMB Magazine