Chilean Poet

by Alejandro Zambra

At some point I decided I was in love with her and that everything made sense and I would die for her and for her son. At some point I decided to buy a few knives and I decided I would take those knives and climb all the mountains and all the hills in my country and defend Carla and Vicente with my life.

It would have been better to blame poetry, but it would have been a lie, because there are those poems he has just read, poems that prove poetry is good for something, that words can wound, throb, cure, console, resonate, remain.