tr Esteban Alonso Ramírez 

What would we find in the mirrors if we put them together?

Would we know why Borges avoided them?
Would we find the
light in Pizarnik’s nightmares?
Would we find the joys of the Vallejo who threw poems in Paris
or the last tear that fell on Platt’s oven?

Would they show us the faces of
those who haunted them like ghosts and
forced them into exile?

Would we be invited to walk through them to
show how Carroll imagined his Alice?
How thin don Quixote was drawn by Cervantes?
How ruinous was Comala in Rulfo’s eyes?

Who would be tasked with putting
together the pieces of the mirror in Watanabe’s room
where he put out his last cigarette
or the one in the room where Szymborska lost her ornithologist’s gaze
to record as a bird the precise word?

Who would dare to stick his hands in this pool of crystals to find the
reflection of Rimbaud’s naked body
as Verlaine embraced him from the waist
Lorca’s panic before being captured
Lezama’s sickly colors
Alcott’s kiss on Thoreau’s forehead?

Would we find ourselves with the dirty dishes of breakfast
on the day Whitman finished the Leaves of Drass,
with a beret thrown on the sofa
after Neruda found the verse
with which he finished his Canto General,
or with Didion’s silhouette in the corridor finding the title for his blue nights?

Mirrors
preserve in another dimension
the figure of those who
left their doubts written down
and today come to us with the force

Sebastian Miranda Brenes was born  in Costa Rica, 1983. He is a writer and environmental teacher. Beteween 2010 and 2022, was invited to several international poetry festivals  around Latin America. He published Antimaria (Antimatter), first edition Mexico, 2013 and second edition Costa Rica, 2022, also El sudor de la morfina (Morphine sweat), Costa Rica, 2020, and Luminiscencia (Luminescene), New York, 2022.

Esteban Alonso Ramírez was born in Costa Rica, 1983. He is a writer and psychologist. He has published the book of haiku and essays ‘Corazón de los Días’ (The Core of Days, Ediciones Espiral, San José, 2010, Costa Rica) and ‘Ser un Tercero’ (On Being a Third, EUNED, 2015, Costa Rica).