Ahasuerus

Suspiro un aire suicida y un arco de triunfos frustrados

Como un sepulcro Corsicano, siento las catacumbas

De tesoros jeroglíficos y

el encanto naturalista de nuestra señora y

las almas perdidas y

yo un cadáver fresco como el amanecer

Insolente y nefasto…

What sin you gift me, friend?

I feel not remorse, my wanderings

Are my fevered ecstasy

The regal simplicity at Pan’s feet

There in Kensington’s garden

I felt the mythic weight of antiquity

There again I drink in the euphoric existence

Of your Majestic ease

En barrios góticos y

casas insólitas de losas atropelladas,

procurando peligros

en ramblas descontroladas

vagueo felizmente y que sacrilegio de mares sintéticos

De tus familias consagradas que me recuerdan aún

At a trinity of mounts or any Spanish step

There you can attest to my fingerprints

Amongst fallen warriors and vanishing glories

A pantheon of memories, silent and catatonic

A maze of synagogues, villas and a coliseum

Only to scent my presence, so as to know

Myself alive, one foot print at a time

Cruzo el ecuador y me pierdo en laberintos porteños

Y en la casa Anchorena, rindo cultos circulares

a ciegos clarividentes, filántropo misericordioso

Y yo sofocado por galerías grises y casas rosadas

Que relampaguean en mi memoria

Como un siniestro uncanny,

Increpándome dulcemente:

¡Hay, os digo, aquí quien no saboreara el néctar de la muerte!

Y yo parto hacia corcovado,

unwelcome into a city of men.

BIO

Edwin Murillo is Assistant Professor of Spanish at Penn State University-Berks.

He has also been Assistant Professor of Modern Languages at Erskine College.

He received his doctorate from the University of Miami and holds an M.A. in

Spanish Language and a B.S. in Psychology from the University of Houston. 

Most of his work focuses on Latin American Existentialism and his writing

aims to reconsider Latin America’s contribution and subordinated position in

the Existentialism canon. His articles have appeared in Divergencias,

Neophilologus, and Hispanófila. His poetry has appeared in Marcapasos and

in Líneas desde el golfo, edited Edna Ochoa and published by LACASA.