Plaza de Armas

If you walk this square,

Do your best to recall me —

An inquisitive girl who’s been asking you questions

Back in France.

Someone who was too fast to think, to react, to do —

A bit forgetful but goal-oriented and sincere.

 

How are you doing?

Have you already reinvented space travel?

Have you made it to the NASA?

 

Have you seen more than 50 or 70 countries?

 

Who are the people you keep talking to right now

And which languages do you prefer to use?

 

Plaza de Armas looks so much as our place in Toulouse,

As vivid as it used to be, as vibrant and cosmopolitan,

With an air of European elegance and a fiery mood of Latin American passion…

 

If you get a chance, after you have finished any of your weekdays

(If they exist in your reality),

Take one or two minutes and read one or two of my English poems

Aloud in that square,

 

So that beauty and knowledge will cross borders,

Clear up the sky for us,

Shine like northern or southern lights,

Make our hearts beat in the unison,

Unite our minds in search for new inventions,

Reconcile us amidst a global crisis

And keep us strong in the times of turmoil.

 

Read this poem in Plaza de Armas

And recall the early sunrise of our youth,

The sunlight of our ambitions

And a spicy taste of our illusions and mistakes.

 

12.11.21

 

*In Ukraine November, 10 is the Day of Science, so this poem is devoted to a space physicist whom I met during my French language course in Toulouse in 2009 and who is originally from Chile.