Anthropology

Myths change but this one
continues being the land
where lemons flower
though no one finds it significant
because the thistle also blooms
without supervision
except by the brush that reduces it to one plane.
But this is still
myth’s dwelling place.
Or a toxic open sky
and not a dwelling at all.
A shore of the known world
where, indifferent to each other,
the lemon, the thistle bloom.

Translated by Curtis Bauer
“Anthropology” is from Echado a perder [Spoiled] (Madrid, Visor, 2007); this English translation appeared in The Dirty Goat #25.

You can read and listen to the poem in the original Spanish here.