807 | SHIPWRECKED

Shipwrecked
To those who do not listen

Nobody listens . . .

Submerged to the bottom,

the seaweed envelops us.

Voiceless cries come together:

Listening was the echo

of a tumult of absent ones,

deaf to the howls.

Silence . . .

Like traces of no one

with erased faces,

dark and defeated.

Men, women, children—

we are weeping in the water.

Nobody listens!

Isabel Flors Aparicio (Pisabí), Spain

Translation Germain Droogenbroodt – Stanley Barkan