Secrets in the Sand [And the night was a precipice]
And the night was a precipice,
And the night was a hollow sound,
Beyond all depths and silences.
It was night in the city of Juárez and the dead women of Juárez
Protected the living ones.
It didn’t seem like a typical night at the border.
It seemed more like the drowsiness of a mute inferno
And flames transforming into knives.
Night in Juárez was a perverse mirror
Where death breathed its hollow
Trophies over the sand.
And night in the city of Juárez didn’t have a beginning or an end
Just fear
Just death.
Copyright © 2006 by Marjorie Agosìn. From Secrets in the Sand. Reprinted with permission of White Pine Press.
Marjorie Agosín
Marjorie Agosín is the author of numerous poetry collections, including At the Threshold of Memory: New & Selected Poems (White Pine Press, 2003) and Toward the Splendid City (Bilingual Press/Editorial Bilingüe, 1994), winner of the 1995 Latino Literature Prize. She lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts.