El abismo es nuestra casa.
Desde aquí vemos la noche,
superior, absoluta,
oscura como ninguna noche.
Estábamos posados en la tierra, pero ahora
la tierra es nuestro cielo.
Allá arriba, la cruz de la Gran Tumba
repite interminable
la perorata de nuestra defenestración.
Pero estamos hundidos hasta
lo más bajo,
lo más pesado y hondo que se puede.
Aquí desde el fondo de la Tierra
sólo podemos
desabismarnos.
Sin embargo los dioses
levantaron los dados
ya
y la tortura de nuestro paso siguiente
es que tenemos el peso más absurdo
de toda libertad.

The Abyss

Translated into English by the author

The abyss is our home.
From here we observe the night,
superior, absolute,
and dark as no other.
We were detained on earth, but now
the soil is our sky.
Up above, the cross of the Great Tomb
endless repeats
the peroration of our defenestration.
But we are sunk up
to the lowest,
heaviest and deepest as we can.
Here from bottom of Earth
we can only
unabysmate ourselves.
But the gods
picked the dice up
by now
and the torture of our next step
is to carry the most absurd weight
of all freedom.

Benjamín Valdivia is author of more than fifty books (poetry, fiction, short story, drama, and essay, both literary and academic). His works have received international prizes and recognition. He translates works from English, French, Portuguese, Italian, German and Latin. He is also an actor and a musician. At present, he resides in Guanajuato, Mexico conducting the PhD in Arts for the prestigious University of Guanajuato. Formerly, he was chairman of the Cervantes Research Center in the same city, and editor of the “Revista de Estudios Cervantinos” virtual magazine.