Secret Eyes or After Disaster

Secret Eyes or After the Disaster, by Luis Cruz-Villalobos, appears in the OrangeLine Collection of NoteBook Poiesis (2025).The book Secret Eyes by Luis Cruz-Villalobos is an elegiac book, built on the ruins of a safe space. In its lyrical composition, the eyes lamenting death are witnesses to hidden knowledge: faith and hope are revealed in misfortune and deep pain. They become the intangible sacrament of a pilgrim journey through the crumbs of shared sorrow, where we recognize one another and offer companionship, where we cradle each other, where we find nourishment. The surrender to pain is the ability to let go of the expectations we build to shelter ourselves from immensity. Who we were is the broken mirror of who we are as we craft the mysterious truth behind the name of a death. How does revelation occur? It is the gaze upon a new meaning that revokes the singularity, the identity, between the name and its referent, between the father and the deceased son. Faith in the gaze that transcends pain becomes a way of continuing to construct prism-like symbols through which to contemplate the complex and multifaceted constellation of existence, rather than a fragment reduced by the impositions of our fear. In the unflin-ching gaze, the veil becomes a channel of commu-nication with that fraction of heaven we treasure from the very root of the flesh that travels fleetingly through time. Magdalena Biota, PhD

About the Author Luis Cruz-Villalobos (Santiago, Chile, 1976) is a poet, editor, psychotherapist, and professor. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, specializing in clinical psychology, post-traumatic coping, and applied hermeneutics. He is the director of the cultural critique journal Cine y Literatura. A member of the Chilean Writers' Society, he has published over sixty books of poetry and academic essays. Among his poetic works, the following stand out: Poes?a Teol?gica / Theological Poetry (2018 / 2020, with a foreword by John D. Caputo); Como Abrazo Exacto and Ven a M? (2015 and 2017, anthologies selected by Alfredo P?rez Alencart); Con / Cu Cioran (2017, a bilingual Spanish-Romanian edition translated by Carmen Bulzan); Teor?a de la Infelicidad / Theory of Unhappiness (2018 / 2020); Hombre lleno de flores / Man Full of Flowers (2020 / 2022); Stanczyk: Poema narrativo de un serio buf?n (2022, with translations into English, Romanian, and Polish); Diccionario Po?tico de Psiquiatr?a / The Poetic Dictionary of Psychiatry (2023 / 2024, co-written with Spanish psychiatrist and poet Luis M. Iruela); Melod?as Orientales / ???? / Oriental Melodies (2023, a Spanish, English, and Chinese edition with watercolors by Spanish painter Miguel El?as); and the recent photopoetry work Phos (2024, featuring translations into English, German, and Finnish, created with German photographer Claus Terlinden). Parts of his work have been translated into more than ten languages and have received international recognition. In 2024, he was awarded the title of Doctor Honoris Causa by the Tomitan Academy of Romania for his outstanding literary and cultural contributions.