Biography

The window born of a desire for sky
has stationed itself in the black wall like an angel:
it's friend to man,
a carrier of air.

It converses with pools of the earth,
with childlike mirrors of houses,
and tiled roofs on strike.

From high up, windows,
with their diaphanous diatribes,
face the multitudes.

The maestro window
diffuses its light into the night.
It extracts the square root of a meteor,
totals columns of constellations.

The window is the gunwale of earth's ship;
a surf of clouds peacefully surrounds it.
The captain Spirit, eyes washed
by blue tempests, searches for the island of God.

The window distributes to everyone
a quart of light, a bucket of air.
The window, plowed by clouds,
is the small property of the sky.


- Jorge Carrera Andrade

Poems From Century Of The Death Of The Rose:
Selected Poems, 1926-1976

translated from the Spanish by Steven Ford Brown