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The Puerto Rican Literature Project The Puerto Rican Literature Project

Sunday Song

Cristina Pérez Díaz

2022

There are no verbs on Sundays,

But things do happen

 

Melting, for instance,

Slow or fast, it all depends on the seasons.

 

When it is not Sunday I eat

Other things and ice cream too,

 

The week happens so fast 

There is no time for melting,

 

No licking just swallowing,

No bench in the park 

 

But a shivering, transitive, sidewalk.

Even if the flavor is of bright pink strawberry

 

The color is not even bitter it’s imprecise.

It is precisely the lack of precision that bothers me

 

On Sundays, I take the matter of justice in my hands, I

Cut the day, sharp, with neat borders, I 

 

Draw, strict lines, with my black, fine, point,

 

Everywhere 

There is 

A surface 

Where one 

Can intervene.

 

One can fold the edges of anything into some thin-

g else, prettier and softer in its definition,

Kind, slow, sweet.

 

And the total sum of the many-folded object

Is an ongoing aria, 

 

–For which the word in Greek is the synonym of law,

But there are no laws on Sundays–

 

I sing, only

I sing.

 

To sing is not a verb but an adjective of voice

Or it is movement contained in a noun: 

 

Breath?

 

I like only reality and so I only like 

This day of preparations,

 

Preparation takes time to enter into time,

It remains aloof from motion and sequences and goodbyes.

 

On Sundays I know just to say a fair “hi”

With a strange punctuation, rather vertical and not final

Rights: Cristina Pérez Díaz; La secta de los perros

Spanish translation coming soon