The earthquake in central Mexico has produced startling and heartrending images, but perhaps none so powerful as those of rescue workers poised with fists held high – the sign for silence – so that any sounds from the rubble and ruins might be heard.

Yesterday the writer Juan Villoro published a poem in the Reforma newspaper called El puño en alto which has captured the imagination of many readers in Mexico and elsewhere. Here is my translation:

 

Fist held high

You’re from the place where you

pick up garbage.

Where two sunbeams fall

on the same spot.

Because you saw the first,

you wait for the second.

And you stay on here.

Where the earth opens up

And the people come together.

*

Another time you arrived late:

you’re alive because you’re not punctual,

because you didn’t show up for

the appointment that at 1.14 pm

would have killed you,

thirty two years after

the other appointment, to which

you didn’t arrive on time, either.

You are the victim who wasn’t there.

The building swayed and you

didn’t see your life pass

before your eyes, like

in the movies.

You had a pain in a part of the body

that you didn’t know existed.

The skin of memory,

that didn’t bring scenes

of your life, but of

the beast that can be heard

crunching up matter.

Also the water remembered

what it was when it

owned this place.

It shook in the rivers.

It shook in the houses

that we concoct in the rivers.

You gathered up the books of another

time, the one you were

long ago

before those pages.

*

The weather went from bad to worse

after the national holidays.

More of a party than a grand occasion.

Is there still room for heroes

in September?

You are afraid.

You have the courage to be afraid.

You don’t know what to do,

but you do something,

You didn’t found the city

nor defended it from invaders.

*

You are, at best,

history’s beggar.

Who picks through rubble

after the tragedy.

Who shifts bricks,

gathers stones,

finds a comb,

two shoes that don’t match,

a wallet with photographs.

Who puts together loose parts,

bits of bits,

remains, only remains,

what fits in the hands.

*

Who doesn’t wear gloves,

Who shares out water,

Who gives away their medicine

because they’re cured of fright.

Who saw the moon and heard

strange things, but didn’t know

how to interpret them.

Who heard the cat miaow

half an hour before and only

understood it with the first shudder,

when water burst from the toilet.

Who prayed in a strange language

because they’d forgotten how to pray.

Who remembered who was where.

Who went to the school

for their children.

Whose battery ran out.

Who ran out onto the street to offer

their cell phone.

Who broke in to rob

an abandoned shop

and repented in

a food bank.

Who knew that they were

one too many

Who stayed awake so that

others could sleep.

*

Who is from here.

Who has just arrived

and is already from here.

Who says ‘city’ so as

to say you and me and Pedro and Marta

and Francisco and Guadalupe.

Who goes two days without electricity or water.

Who still breathes.

Who held a fist high to ask for silence.

Those who paid attention.

Those held up their fist.

Those who held up their fist.

to listen

if anyone was living.

Those who held up their fist

to hear if anyone was living and heard

a murmur.

Those who didn’t stop listening.