[…] He also told us another story. It was about a famous ball player. He was already old and was taking part in what would be his last match against the ascending star at that time. Nobody doubted that the latter would win. And so it was, in fact, although the old player succeeded in something that was worth more than the won match. His rival threw a fatal ball at him and, when everybody thought it was lost, he not only managed to throw it back, but he also did it in a unique way: the ball seemed to vanish when it hit the floor, preventing anybody from recovering it. And Claudio Rodríguez added: “like a tear”. That was the expression he used. And I remember that he repeated it once and again, and that we all saw in its conjuring the flight of that fall and how, on falling, it was transformed into a tear, the tear that contained at the same time the pain of the farewell and the joy of the inexplicable success. I think that that was what Claudio Rodríguez always attempted to when he wrote. Those words that, following their own course, suddenly become self-absorbed and stay still, spinning, because they have found their place. That was poetry for him, that tear that, being so often born from pain and loss, is at the same time the place of the miracle, of the luminous encounter between the world and life. The flight of a celebration.