Chilean Poet

by Alejandro Zambra

Maybe there’s a word to designate the opposite of mourning, what we feel not after someone dies but when they reappear; what we feel when we suddenly recover someone who had been absent even from our dreams. Words like rebirth or resurrection are so inadequate, because what Gonzalo feels is more complex, more specific: the opposite of mourning coexists with mourning, it’s something like an elegiac joy.