Poetry
Estoraques
Not translated into English
Eduardo Cote Lamus · 1963
Synopsis
A single long poem, held together by a place: the estoraques, columns of earth carved by the wind between Cúcuta and Ocaña, which have taken the shapes of figures, castles, dead cities. The speaker walks among them and reads in them what time does to men. The images multiply, earth becomes civilisation and civilisation turns back into dust, while the count of the hours returns from one stanza to the next. The one who looks ends up knowing himself to be made of the same matter.
Context
The last book by its author, published in Bogotá by the Ministry of Education a year before his death. The estoraques are a real place, a group of columns of eroded earth in the department of which he was then governor. He died on the road, two weeks before his birthday, the following year, which has led the poem to be read as a premonition; this is also how his second book has been read, whose title announced a preparation for death. A national poetry prize now bears his name.
Who it is for
A single poem of some thirty pages, in Spanish and with no French translation. It reads in one sitting; looking at photographs of the place before starting helps a great deal.
Prizes and reception
Regarded by critics as the summit of its author's work and as one of the great long poems of the generation of the journal Mito.