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Salò Tomoe is a Peruvian poet, visual artist, and translator. She studied Literature at the National University of San Marcos and conducts research on 20th-century Peruvian poetry. Her published works include Historia General del Amor (2021), Diarios del Armagedón (2021), La destrucción y la música (2021), El evangelio de Circe (2023), Templo de Venus (2023), Los placeres de la imaginación (2024), Orbe Salvaje (2024), En el valle de las Onassis (2024), and Orbe Salvaje II (2025).

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Salò Tomoe: Three Poems

LA FORTUNE

I am about to meet God
through the edge of your hands, I’ve imagined your shadow
gliding over my shoulders like a duel of spikenards
and empty cabins.
I’ve already known bitterness,
I’ve already known sorrow, the kind a woman only
faces once in her life,
I know of the wounded cross
that is piercing the plaza of the most precious country,
I know of loving leprosy
and of the impassive horse
that tramples on rosebeds, on innocent touches,

I have defied this century.

This time I want to return
to the orange trees hurling tiny jewels,
to the fountain where an angel engenders itself,
to the same rocky language where the world’s history
must be told with a kiss.

Come for me tonight,
I’ll give you my eyes like fathomless candles
no one ever lit.
Come for me tonight,
I have a drum and a stick, the heart of a fair
and the noise of satyrs stripping the leaves off dawn.
I’ll drown in your fingers.
Come for me tonight,
I’ve pictured your hands, your innermost melody
brimming with petals, and circus, and choleric angels
sharpening the edges of known and unknown
Heavens.
Now I want to love you
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxzxxxxxxxxas nobody ever has. I want to cling to your time
and even beyond your time
like a solitary light,
and I want to watch the air give birth to another rose
every time you smile.

Come for me tonight.

LES AMOUREUX

Dawn inundating the streets, you and I
never cease to adore each other, you and I
running through dead-end streets, you and I
emulating the purest angels, you and I
have seen the purpose of this century, you and I
have been the purpose of this century, you and I
ignoring the streetcar of hours, you and I
watching the world collapse, feeling no burden, you and I
sharing with the stag and the beggar, you and I
a table where no one else fits, you and I
youth and eternity, unquenchable, you and I
we renounce the most human death, you and I,
only you and I
only you and I
only you and I
only you and I.

LE RENAÎTRE

Where were you, beloved, since the dawn of time?
Nothing remains in my body
that hasn’t heard of your name
like a cherished sound, your heart against mine
are making death dance, your heart against mine
now burn as one by a god’s arrow,
like a blind idol obeying nothing
but your law.
Beloved paradise,
make this woman your dwelling of stars.
Your shadow smolders and echoes
the completeness of your being,
I see life in your eyes, love has been born
towards forever twice over,
between you and me, twice over.

Omar Pinedo is the author Mitologías Individuales  (Plectro, 2016) and Diez Toros (Vallejo & Co, 2022). Translator of Honey for a Donkey’s Mouth by Nilton Santiago and Wild Orb II by Saló Tomoe.

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