I was born on the outskirts of Hades in the year when the plague spread
and in my earliest days I learned to curse in ancient language
to ignore the dark of the Almendral.
On the third day I ascended to Playa Ancha and they seated me
on the right hand of my father
in the days when calamities increased in the wharf.
Despite the abyss, I was to aspire to a perpetual penance
Packed into a hut on the highest wooded hills or sheltered
in a cave of coastal renegades
lifelike nights narrate my years of the Antichrist
descending desperate to the Chinese Quarter with its emptiness
and its depths like Faust and Mephistopheles.
I spoke an indecent criminal slang
in dealing patiently with scavengers,
birds of bad omen
and with other bald and prostrated bards
who wanted to accede to Paradise.
In my adventures with wicked individuals and whores
at Echaurren Square and Cajilla Street
ruffians soaked in vices and rudeness
I learned everything from charlatans and abased people.
I fell in love several times knowing from experience that age doesn’t matter
if mating fleetingly like lewd animals
kissing and consecrating them from their pubis
to their feet
Whole nights handling their slopes
without melancholic burden.
Sometimes I become lost in thought in my bay as in olden times
my shade narrating my years of the Antichrist.
Today it remains only an uncolored beard and my reflections
of sterile redemption in some place at the harbor in Valparaiso.
(Translated by Christine de Luca)
