Poetry: Juan Garrido-salgado The Cryptic: Liam Runnalls

is a poet and translator who fled Chile for Australia in 1990. His sixth collection of poetry, Hope Blossoming in Their Ink

(Puncher and Wattman), was published last year.

The dilemma of writing a few verses

The dilemma of writing a poem without light, without the amenities of paper and ink without the digital keyboard but with memory correcting each verse like a clock tired of telling the time, a fallen rhythm into language in the calm of the dawn.

Only then, re-reading it from the blue caressing the dew on the glass in my window.

Only printing it in the flight of the last waking dream.

Look back to where the wound is (Volver la mirada donde está la herida) To Patty

Look back to where the wound is

And let the day clean it, let the night lick it With shadows that come to surround you with

calm or pain.

The open wound arrives like a clock from the

past

Anchored in your bleeding skin between the

bones

Of what you were yesterday, tangled up today. The dry word on numb lips.

Breathing is a cascade of howls falling Through the blood, through the open sides

of the skin.

“When a star sinks into a black hole”. Ernesto

Cardenal read

This verse to me before I left Managua.

Life is a table set up for us to live the day To Gina and the gardeners at Roma M’s Garden

1

I wait for the call of your green leaves Lorca’s rushed canto of that fruit which will come floating in the mystery of water in the depth of roots who kiss the light of day on the lips of the father sun

we are fruits of those warm aromas that feed our souls and make us love the simple mystery of each verse growing in the broccoli from the garden where I live

2 a dry leaf falls in the verse the ink moans in its texture giving the winter a melody the rain tunes its violins the verse gives me a silhouette

• rolling like a tear on the window