Breath of Root
Under the earth, a root breathes in gasps,
digging time among the fingers of stone.
It reveals buried squares, streets without clocks,
and salt markets that have lost their voice.
Memory emerges like an echo of a found beat,
houses surface from the mud, coral balconies.
The submerged city remembers itself in a breath of wind,
and the root’s breath makes it walk again.
Explanation
The text takes the form of a deep elegy, a meditation on geological time and the persistence of collective memory. The poem does not simply describe a place; it explores its temporal stratification, operating a symbolic dialogue between subterranean oblivion and civilizing awakening.
The central symbol is undeniably the root. It transcends its botanical function to become a metaphor for time itself, ancestral memory, and an intrinsic vital force that refuses nullification. The initial action – “a root breathes in gasps” – immediately introduces an element of vital fragility; the breath is not constant but intermittent, almost painful, suggesting the effort with which history rises from the ashes of oblivion.
The described space is an urban and mythical palimpsest. Stone represents immutability, stasis, the physical limit of human time, while the root, enveloping or excavating it (“digging time among the fingers of stone”), demonstrates its erosive yet also revealing capacity. The “buried squares” and the “markets