Jorge Guillén: The monsters have passed over
Anti-war essays, poems, short stories and literary excerpts
Jorge Guillén
Ruins With Fear
Translated by Cola Franzen
No, it’s not possible to collect all the rubble. There’s too much. And so
they are caught between the horror light brings and ordinary daily life.
The city survives by sheer effort before silent stones, knocked out
of kilter, half-cocked, leveled, on an even keel with the great human
torment.
Skeletal structures yet retain living fibrils. The emissaries of Reason,
will they fly again on their wings of Providential Archangel?
And among some intact forms, saved by chance (someone not
human), so many cracks still throb from the passage of the monsters.
The monsters have passed over. Passed! Around the suffering mutilated
walls the air becomes cloudy. Will the monsters come back?
Horrible ruins with no beauty. Ruins with the dread of not even
existing as anguish, side by side with the diabolical blade set in place
by the Archangel.
