Words of the Greek by Francisco Hernández

Guillermo Manning

Palabras de la Griega

He de perder tu nombre
en la primera cripta del cementerio.
He de perder tu acento
al escuchar jadeos entre las viñas
o al encino temblar en la leñera.
Bajo la puerta encontraré la clave
para dar con el frasco de veneno:
a brújulas nacidas sin oriente
soles que nos deslumbran apagados.

Y en el frasco, en vez del tósigo liberador,
veré saltar tus últimas palabras:
lo que tu voz tiene de piedra
colgará de tu cuello en otra vida.

Words of the Greek


I shall look for your name
on the first crypt of the cemetery.
I shall lose your accent
when I hear pantings in vineyards
or when the oak trembles in the woodpile.
Under the door I will find the cipher
to reach the poison jar:
to compasses born without east,
dark suns that dazzle us.

And in the jar, instead of a liberating venom,
I shall see your last words leaping out:
that which the voice has of a stone
will hang from your neck in another life.



Francisco Hernández was born in 1946, in San Andrés Tuxtla, Veracruz, Mexico. He is the author of more than twenty collections of poetry. In 1982 he won the Aguascalientes Award, for “Mar de Fondo,” and in 1994 he received the Xavier Villaurrutia Award, the most important literary prize in Mexico, for his collection “Moneda de Tres Caras,” (Three Sides of the Same Coin), in which he explores the lives of Friedrich Hölderlin, Robert Schumann, and Robert Trakl. In 2012 he received the National Prize for Arts and Sciences.
(Photo by Rogelio Cuellar)
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