DEUDAS
Estoy en deuda con el primer sorbo de café acompañado de un trozo de pan en la madrugada
Estoy en deuda con el par de gotas en las pupilas que demoran mi ceguera
Estoy en deuda con la imagen que rescato del último sueño y vierto con torpeza en la computadora humeante aún de la noche más reciente
Estoy en deuda con los ausentes que tiritan y no les abro mi puerta para que no trepen con los zapatos embarrados dentro de mis sábanas
Estoy en deuda con mi propia ira para enumerar las injusticias que chorrean sangre y soy absolutamente impotente para reducir un ápice la magnitud de su potencia
Pago mi deuda día tras día nombrándolas como mejor puedo
Y digo gracias por el respiro
Todavía
DEBTS
I am indebted to the first sip of coffee accompanied by a piece of bread in the early mornings.
I am indebted to the two drops in my pupils that delay my blindness.
I am indebted to the image I rescue from the last dream and awkwardly pour into the still-smoky computer from the most recent night.
I am indebted to the absent ones who shiver and I do not open my door so they do not climb with muddy shoes into my sheets.
I am indebted to my own anger to count the injustices that drip blood and I am absolutely powerless to reduce one iota the magnitude of their strength
I repay my debt day after day by naming them as best I can
And I am still grateful for the breath
Luisa Futoransky is an Argentine writer born in Buenos Aires, 1939. She has been living in Paris for about 40 years. In France she was a lecturer at the Pompidou Center in Paris and a journalist for the AFP press agency. She was decorated by the French government with the rank of Chevalier des Arts et Lettres. For five years she lived in China and Japan where she worked as a journalist at Radio Beijing, NHK and at the Musashino University of Music, Tokyo, as a professor of opera staging. Her novels Son cuentos chinos and De Pe a Pa o De Pekín a París are the result of that stay. Currently, since 2008, she has been in charge of the Spanish edition of the quarterly magazine Patrimonio Mundial de la UNESCO.