The river wants to be heard before it is contaminated.
The ñipas are its spirits, its guardians. The perfumed shrub.
Thread is a trail
I’m lost on
the trail is a scent
I travel
The Chibchas wove trails on the crests of the hills to join the villages of Cundinamarca and Boyacá.
Poetry lives in certain places
where the cliffs need nothing
but a sign to come alive.
two or three lines, a marking,
and silence begins to speak.
(Bogotá, 1981)
The opinions of birds are very important. Would they accept the woven trees? In a few minutes they were singing like crazy.
(Lexington, New York, 1987)
I launched boats on the river, talking to it. Changing sign, mine and those there by chance. The boats and the trash, mingling.
(New York, 1990)
Vicuña, Cecilia. “Unravelling Words & the Weaving of Water”. Minnesota: Graywolf Press, 1992. p. 16, 17, 21, 23. Translated by Eliot Weinberger and Suzanne Jill Levine.