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It’s melting helplessly,

the North Star.

Ten million, or even more,

tons every day

(ice, cold light, gas)

waste away from the frame

of this immense animal.

You will see,

if you look just over there,

how our team of conservators

keeps putting puffs of cotton

in the empty spaces.

But this won’t be enough,

and within four centuries at most,

navigators will have

to blindly feel their way across the sea.

What responsibility!

The animal that costs us most,

and the one we can conserve the least.

The North Star

Aaron Coleman, translation from
the Spanish written by Nicolás Guillén


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