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[SPANISH]

Absent Homeland

 
I thought the homeland was only
the geographic notion we were given in the textbooks,
so that by just leaving its physical limits
it was possible to erase its name from memory.

But once I left my nation, and in its absence
learned that it is not only a region
lost in the planet, but the place
where resides the deepest roots of our soul.

I learned that it is encircled in our childhood,
that a place, a perfume, or a lover makes us remember it,
that the dear bones that sleep in its shelter
call us, in silence, to share its land.

And I learned that the homeland is a distant pain,
or a game in childhood, or a blue sky
seen in the countryside one day
or a pair of eyes looking at us from a vague memory.

I also learned that the name of the country designates
the familiar river that goes through our people,
a patio where, alone, we discover the world,
a friendship that was deeper with time.

I learned that the nation is the old home,
with its quiet garden and its favorite tree
which rises on the spot
where, trembling, memory begins to grow.

I learned that it is the memory of the heroes,
the flavor that its land gives to certain fruits,
the seas that keep it, encircling its contours,
the rivers that sing with its voice of lather.

I learned that in her there are a thousand unerasable places
where during a time sprung up longings and hopes
and we had defeats and triumphs linked
like riverbed and river, like light and dawn.

I understood that in absence the homeland is
closer to the heart, and in vain it is distanced
by oceans and valleys of time, for its name
-as a river of nostalgia-
runs in our skin without stopping, in absence.

Oscar Echeverri Mejia, La Patria Ilímite, poemas 1957-1966
(Colombian, born 1918)

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