The open minds of Latin America thank you for your caress, the lullaby, the silence, the pause. We thank you for giving our dreams a compass, for giving names to the days, for putting a face to the faceless.
All the open minds thank you for the song, for blowing the clouds away, for having given voice to the silenced, to the contemptible nobodies, to everyone’s injustices.
We are Galeano, we are Eduardo. The 21st century would not have seen so many fires if the Uruguayan had not been blowing on the embers with so much care, if he had not held the flames in his hands.
Universal history was the clay that his hands gave form to, that his finesse put to right, giving meaning to a world collapsing in crushing madness.
I planted your lucidity in my pages, I used your watercolours to paint passions, to unfurl flags, to not give up on the thousands of colours.
We owe each other an embrace; it will be like one of those Neapolitan coffees, a pending coffee. I leave it written, I leave it in the air to wait awake.
I had friends who shook your hand, who shed tears on your shoulder, who trembled while listening to you, who were moved by their reflection in your clear pupils.
You are close, you are not the horizon in the distance, you are close by, like the utopia that fires up our hearts and launches us in search of a future, that unique moment where we recognise our yesterdays and todays.
You knew that a person survives in others, in the memory and in the actions launched. You knew, as all poets do, that tomorrow is better, tomorrow is always better.
So, until tomorrow, Eduardo, tomorrow we will feel better.
You haven’t gone, not even a bit.
