Irene Mercedes Aguirre writes

The Slope 

A shared human lineage brings us together 
and similar dreams connect us. 
You suffer, you love, you despise, and your brow 
reflects the thought that unites us.

On Gaia we walk through our days, 
of the centuries, lightning flashing, 
with their perennial dramas and joys, 
with blind, mendacious passions. 

But we still have a long way to go! A long way for us! 
This slope so slow, the climb so hard 
as it rises, goes higher and exalts us! 
So high and sublime! So upward!

It leads to the highest place, right to the centre, 
the very being. No more lives without meaning! 
So deep into abstractions does it enter,  
towards hasty understanding.

And still so far to go! Isn't it, Companions? 
How far away peace is! So many miseries! 
What if we were to go in union? 
New blood would surge through the arteries!

Irene Mercedes Aguirre

Crucial  

Indifferent time slipping away, 
anguish of the life that it imprisons 
with the crucial sickle of the last turn, 
summons us urgently, leads us 
to choose the optimal path 
from all those possible. To discern.

Though our existence seems like honey 
with its broad spectrum of joys 
tries to protect us under its shelter, 
a sort of sixth sense warns us  
against taking the beaten track 
and to rekindle our feeble light.

That avowed lamp of the mind, 
like a reckless vandal beckons 
and assaults our being as it lights us. 
Sacred possible altar, never absent, 
invites us to sow its seeds, 
in virgin earth unknown to us.
 
What to do? Turn our back? Look away? 
Ignore what is possible, disregard 
the beacon in the solitary immensity? 
Or keep on trying, fencing in 
the noble thought that is glimpsed 
through the darkness of the day?

Irene Mercedes Aguirre writes

   “ll  y a un autre monde, mais il est dans celui-ci” (Paul Éluard)

Vital Tension 

We did not quicken our step 
just to wander aimlessly 
blind to the objective of life 
cloyed by things, without destiny. 

 Nor did we conquer the word 
just to waste it, starved of sense 
nor form a vocabulary 
as a simple device for sound.

Somehow, mysteriously 
if the human being looks up to the skies 
it will be possible to grasp other rhythms 
to open up spaces for our desires.

For in the labyrinth of the minds 
within their inner tissue, deep folds, 
we will sense the heavy beating, 
the muffled rumour of other worlds.

Within those intimate palpitations  
we will capture our own essence, 
a memorious cadence of the genes 
forged in the depths of time!

From within, we will later emerge, 
and from up high, come down straight away, 
and between the sky and the earth, elbow to elbow, 
we will build a life, if we try!