To Edgar Allan Poe (English version)

 

To Edgar Allan Poe (English version)

I walked the streets looking for your body,

I had hallucinations where to find you

I followed the opium carried by a group of silhouettes

in an alley of colorless shadows

where I swear I saw your unusual form

mumbling spells in strange languages.

 

On a corner I found your name

the house was silent and pains howled

the darkness murmured certain mysteries

there was a certain scent of perfume in a mirror

the stairs creaked with broken words

I felt infinity in the solitude of the dust on the bookshelf.

 

I found your fleeting fragments without looking for you

I walked the streets where you wandered alone

I dressed myself in your pains I drank dark tears

each step a return to an unexplored past

I spoke with your unknown tone of voice

I rehearsed on a sidewalk ways to die in your memory.

 

Amidst whispers of leaves I embraced your graves

I parked empty in a corner of Baltimore

specters appeared invisible in other niches

“I am a poet” I said without a voice and everything fell silent

I caressed the inexact plaque with your face

a prediction of tears camped on my cheek.

 

Edgar Allan Poe is dead they say Google

while a disheveled crow becomes a verb

orphaned in time from some anonymous place

dark mystery lost beggar's lapel

when on January 19 a poet leaves a poem

to two poets almost buried in the same verse.