I Have Seen You
by Lolita Lebron

I have seen you as I searched
in the shade
of this terrifying and cold silence.
Some furniture falls to pieces…
and I’m left with the cell,
bereft of warmth and humor.
Everything is so alone. So disquieting.
Love has gone so far away from my eyes…
And there is no chirping from the birds
to make me smile away my sorrow…
“I am trembling, companero,
with painful and exhausting uneasiness!”
My shoulders hurt…as if sinking under
the weight of tortured rock,
The hour is dark.
The day silent with a moan
hidden in its great burden.
Even prayer is wounding: in the depths of my entrails
pain tearlessly weeps.
I like forests and gardens.
The waterfalls and their tiny crabs,
their rocks,
their murmurs and bubbles,
their radiant streams,
the thought of their mysteries,
with flowers and plants surrounding them.
Their aromas.
And how I loved the washerwomen,
scrubbing upon the rocks
with a box of bluing at their side.
How they remind me of mama!
Here, jail is like a tempest,
heavy and hard-hearted…
A ruin that reeks of death
and unspeakable pain.
It is the white bear’s domain.
Keys and blows, headcounts,
injustices and schemes.
Undisclosed tortures
from an unwritable book.
The real story of death,
unwritten, without pages.