Letter from Mexico, by Homero Aridjis

Invisible ancestors

walk with us

through these back streets

car-noises

the stares of children

young girls’ bodies

cross through them

Weightless vague

we travel through them

at doorways that no longer are

on bridges that are empty

while with the sun on our faces

we too

move toward transparency

****

TRANSLATED BY ELIOT WEINBERGER

From “Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry: A Bilingual Anthology,” edited by Stephen Tapscott (University of Texas Press: 448 pp., $24.95 paper)