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The Country of Planks
Raúl Zurita
Traducción de la lengua inglesa de Daniel Borzutsky
Prison Mocha Island
-Like amputated arms-
And down below the planks
of Chile broke falling
like amputated arms
Like a scream the crowd kept moving through the corridor
of the sea
Crossing through the broken barracks the interminable
piles of sticks like a long line of rubble pressing between
the standing waves
While the Pacific ocean appeared to fold atop the
snowy mountains and the multitude stuck to that broken
scaffolding the way the wind sticks as it crosses the mutilated
waters
When the broken scaffolding of the coast sustained
for one minute more the immense and dead sky of
the barracks where all of Chile was falling And
even the planks were crying as they felt collapsing on them
the surf that broke them as if they were the tortured
and the excited gales of their children embraced them
weeping kissing their amputated arms
Prison Puchuncaví
-The broken palisades-
And cracked the landscapes
spun around at the mercy of
the waves like broken palisades
And Chile kept folding over splintering clearing the
corridor of the sea
Clearing the path between the waters while the torrents of our shattered
bodies began once more the march mutilated biting their sliced up pieces
Pointing with their stumps to the landscapes that flamed just like sheets
in the stakes of that homeland of planks like the air like the soft
breeze like the whirling winds blowing between the leaves
And it was like never having lived the broken stakes the demolished
frames the destroyed scaffolding falling and it was like never having
been the sheets of the landscape folded over the pile of sticks and over
them the mutilated legs the burnt torsos the broken necks folding and
folding like the dead country was folding between the scaffolded arms
of the palisades
Prison Quiriquina is
-The bullet-riddled scaffolding-
We went down there then; up
ahead all of Chile was leaning
like a prow sinking into the waves
And slowly like a falling wave the wooden landscapes
began to spin around
Up ahead bowing just like the heads of oxen beneath
their yokes trembling as if conquered by the push
of the waves
Carrying the guilt that left us exhausted seeing the country nailed
down between the walls of the sea and the waves pounding
one after another against the palisaded coast sounded like the
beating of a heart
And then as if the whole horizon was bearing down on them
the scaffolding of Chile appeared outlined for the last time while
its nailed-down archipelagos its walled-up deserts the thick planks
of the cordillera began to give way as if the sea swells jamming into
them were the remorse and the guilt was the long stretch of dead planks
that fell like a bullet-riddled body facing the breakers
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