by Roberto Bolaño | translated by B. H. Boston
Hear me, my son: bombs were falling
over Mexico City
but no one noticed. The air spread poison through
the streets and open windows.
You’d just finished breakfast and were watching
cartoons on TV.
I was reading in the next room
when I knew we were going to die.
Despite the dizziness and nausea I dragged myself
to the kitchen and found you on the floor.
We hugged. You asked what was happening
and I didn’t tell you we were on death’s telethon
but I whispered: we are going on a journey,
you and I, together, don’t be afraid.
When it left, death didn’t even
close our eyes.
What are we? you asked a week a year later,
ants, bees, wrong numbers
in the big spoiled soup of chance?
We’re human beings, my son, nearly birds,
public heroes and secrets.
Born in Santiago, Chile, Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) moved to Mexico City with his family in 1968. He went back to Chile in 1973 to “help build socialism” (as he wrote in his story “Dance Card”), but less than a month after his return Pinochet seized power. Bolaño was arrested and imprisoned in Concepción. After his release, he returned to Mexico before moving to Paris and then on to Barcelona. Bolaño has been acclaimed as “the real thing and the rarest” (Susan Sontag), “a spellbinder” (Newsweek), and “never less than mesmerizing” (Los Angeles Times). Winner of many prizes, including the Premio Herralde de Novela and the Premio Rómulo Gallegos, Bolaño wrote ten novels, two collections of short stories and five books of poetry before he died at the age of 50, on July 15, 2003.
B. H. Boston’s work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Crazy Horse, Black Warrior Review, Poetry NOW, Western Humanities Review, The Marlboro Review, Ploughshares, and anthologies including Down at the Santa Fe Depot, The Geography of Home: California’s Poetry of Place, and the recently published How Much Earth. A book of his poems, Only the Living, was published by Helix Press.