Emma Sepúlveda-Pulvirenti, born in Chile, is professor of Spanish Literature at the University of Nevada at Reno.
A poet, photographer and community activist, she has most recently published Death to Silence/Muerto al silencio
(Arte Público Press, 1997), a collection of poetry inspired by her experiences in Chile during the Pinochet regime,
and has collaborated with Marjorie Agosin on a volume of letters entitled Amigas Letters of Friendship and Exile
(2001). She is the recipient of the Thornton Peace Prize (1994) and the Peabody Award (1993).

Emma Sepulveda-Pulvirenti

("Death to Silence" - 1953 "Muerte al silencio")

translated by Shan T.Griffin

Mortal Fear of Death

Man is dead with fear,
mortal fear of death.

That fear is here
and I cannot conquer it

fear of sleeping
and not waking,
being left, trapped
in hard hands
of the dark cell,
become shadow
in the middle of my life

bury myself
decompose
dry out
harden
and never again

feel seized at the waist
by love's spell
that fear of leaving me
leaving you
without lips
eyes
words
in the profound hollow
of emptiness,
that fear I bear here
and cannot conquer

fear that slowly
kills
before my hour arrives.

If Words Did Not Convey

Davis, California 1983

What if words did not convey
what we believed they conveyed?
..............................
Perhaps
in the end
we would pair
no things
with nothing

and all things
with everything
like this:

hands
eyes
the smile
of lips
the quilt of skin
and the silence

the infinite silence
the infinite endless silence.

---

To the Galician Night

Lips
darkness
and names
conceal
desire
yours and mine
we do not know blame here
to find ourselves
we will have to search
far from the body
we will have to find the other
losing ourselves in the infinite absence
of dormant passion.

---

Alone

Alone, I Ask
And the shadows?
What are they like below the soil of the dead
stretched
round
flat?
Or
perhaps with us, the shadow also dies?

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