Hernan Miranda Casanova
There is only cartilage, only bones.
I must stitch together gashes that I did not produce.
I must put together the pieces of a cranium.
I am too human to live in peace.
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Hernan Miranda Cassanova was born in Quillota, Chile in 1941. He is a poet, journalist, and professor of Political Philosophy. His poems have appeared in numerous anthologies since 1963. Between 1970 and 1973 he worked in the Palacio de la Moneda (the equivalent of the White House in the US) as a journalist in the Office of Presidential Information. He has been a literature critic in several leading newspapers both in Chile and Argentina. He has received numerous distinguished honors and awards and has published numerous books of poetry, his most recent being “Rumbo a Corfú” (Heading
Toward Corfu) which was published in 2007.
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“I Will Not Give Anyone a Lethal Drug…” *
Here I am alone with my potions, my scalpels,
my broken nails, my spatterings.
Here with my uneasy conscience.
Here with my disturbed world.
Here with my naked corpse on top of the marble
And time which should be abolished here.
We are the same. Those that one day had
the ability to be amazed.
There is only cartilage, only bones.
I must stitch together gashes that I did not produce.
I must put together the pieces of a cranium.
I am too human to live in peace.
But who will smile for you someday.
But who will later repeat the things that you said.
But who will make your same mistakes.
But who will inherit your dissatisfaction.
To die and yet watch your own funeral.
To flee and yet be a witness of your flight.
To get lost and yet take part in your own search.
It has to do with here and yet elsewhere.
But I am a surgeon faithful to his oath
and I will continue cutting tendons, removing internal organs
without managing to see in them the future
and I will not give anyone a lethal drug.
*Translated from the Spanish by Andres Alfaro
To see the original poem in Spanish, click HERE.