Latin America is very fond of the word "hope." We like to be called the "continent of hope." Candidates for deputy, senator, president, call themselves "candidates of hope." This hope is really something like a promise of heaven, an IOU whose payment is always being put off. It is put off until the next legislative campaign, until next year, until the next century.

In you is the illusion of each day. You arrive like the dew to the cupped flowers. You undermine the horizon with your absence. Eternally in flight like the wave.

Hands make the world each day.

I ask permission to be like everybody else,like the rest of the world and what's more, like anybody else:I beg you, with all my heart,if we are talking about me, since we are talking about me,please resist blasting the trumpet during my visitand resign yourselves to my quiet absence.

Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood - and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

Between lips and lips there are cities of great ash and moist summit, drops of when and how, vague comings and goings: between lips and lips as along a shore of sand and glass the wind passes.

How much does a man live, after all?/ Does he live a thousand days, or one only? For a week, or for several centuries?/ How long does a man spend dying?/ What does it mean to say 'for ever'?