(Sun in an Empty Room, 1963)

In Edward Hopper’s final painting
there’s an empty room.

Except for two walls, drenched by an invisible
sun that peeks through a
window that suggests the blurry foliage
of a blurrier tree.

The two walls share
a shadowed corner.

                   In the painting,
people will be here any minute now. They’re on the verge
of slipping envelopes
under the door, of jangling
their keys inside
their pockets,
of moving boxes in
or moving out for good.

    One moment to the next.

But there’s no sound, not even from the branches
of the tree that scrapes against
the windowpane, the wind
that rattles them.

   The imminent
is a conjecture of
what’s happening right now, without us:
the ones, standing outside the house or in it,
who briefly hesitate before we step back in or out,
lest we forget something inside
a place we can’t forget.

We hover with our keys
in hand, looking into the emptiness. We stand
transfixed before the door
we’ll open
once again, then close, one moment to the next.



*



If we looked straight ahead inside an empty room,
we’d be nowhere.
That’s why we never see the sun
in Hopper; that’s why we cast
a shadow we can’t see
unless we bow our heads.

Much like the corner of the walls
in that last painting,
hung in a corner of the exhibition
under dim light.

  The guard is behind
the partition, motionless,
seated, wearing a hat.
The keys hang from his belt
and jangle faintly when they brush
his thigh.

  The guard is behind
something, but who knows what.
(He wears a hat.)

Maybe behind the opening and closing of the hall
Tuesday to Sunday.

Meanwhile, the guard
can only wait, and all the people staring at
the painting of an empty room, what do they see.

                                             Like Hopper.
When asked what he was looking for
by painting it, he said, “I’m looking for myself.”

We walk out of the museum.
The sunlight dazzles us for a few seconds,
and once we’re halfway home, we can’t remember where
the sun hit in that final painting,
and if the window showed a tree or just a bush.

We’re on the verge of coming home, one moment
to the next.

(Sol en un cuarto vacío, 1963)