Chaos- translated from Spanish

A butterfly dances

round a lamp.

The girl bows over the bed

and whispers into the old woman’s ear:

if I am made of star dust,

I live inside this universe

which lives within me,

then, no hunger,

no pleasure, nor pain,

are alien to me…”

 Grandmother opens her mouth

and the child’s eyes travel

through an immense and timeless cave,

which exhales a freezing breath.

“Do you see that butterfly?”

Says the woman to the child,

the woman says:

“at this very moment

A mountain in China crumbles,

And in other places,

Where people have no lamps,

butterflies flutter all the same

out of nostalgia for the light.

And when they bat their wings,

wherever in the world

a mother finds her child,

a lover cries,

or a tyrant tumbles.