THIS is the age of iron in the throat. There Poem by Antonio Gamoneda

THIS is the age of iron in the throat. There.

You inhabit yourself but do not recognize yourself: you live in an abandoned vault in which you listen to your heart

while grease and oblivion spread through all your veins and

you calcify amid the pain and from your mouth

fall black syllables.


You make your way toward the invisible

and know that what does not exist is real.

Vaguely, you keep your causes and your dreams

(you still retain the fragrance of the suicides),

they feed your rage and piety.

Not much of you remains: your vertigo, your fingernails

and shadows of memories.

You think of disappearance. You caress

the cerebral darkness, drop to the liver charred by grief.


Such is the age of iron in the throat. Now

nothing can be understood. And even so,

you love as much as you have lost.