The Psychopompos and Other Poems
Dolores de Alma Blanca
There are only two things you never need to chase—Love and Death—for both will find you. And Death is not necessarily the worst of the two.
Dolores de Alma Blanca
The Psychopompos & Other Poems is a collection of twenty-two poems by Dolores de Alma Blanca, translated by Lanfranco Aceti. It is dated Rome, 3 November 2025, and was published by Passero in 2026.
A psychopompos guides the dead across. These poems are addressed to one who does not come, or comes late, or looks away while the queue of souls moves past — so the book is not about crossing but about being kept waiting on the bank. The dead man is present throughout, and the speaker keeps talking to him because nobody has told her to stop.
What makes the collection hold is its refusal of comfort. Grief here is administrative as well as unbearable: a hospital bed where the demons wear white coats, a body washed with rose water as if slowness could persuade God, a drug that works and is therefore the problem. The dead man is loved and indicted in the same breath, and the poems never resolve which he deserved.
The Psychopompous
You came to take me,
but you have left me here to suffer.
You weren’t fast enough—
you tortured me instead,
by looking away
at the multitude of souls
awaiting you.
You’re not guiding me—
you’ve left me waiting,
stranded
on the edge of a river
I do not know
I will cross.
FROM THE COLLECTION
I take the day
and it goes away.
Hours line up
without asking.
Words behave.
Nothing insists.
I think of you
and then
I don’t.
This works.
That’s the problem.
Xanax
Then you died
and became reasonable.
Dust does not argue.
Dust does not explain.
Dust does not remember what it cost
to be remembered.
The Dust
I washed you
with rose water,
slowly,
as if slowness persuades God.
Smell the Roses
No more,
the day I closed your eyes,
that didn’t want to stay shut.
I straightened your legs,
bent at an angle
as if you were running,
and passed my hand on your face,
one last time.
It was goodbye.
It Is Too Easy to Say Goodbye
The complete collection: Kindle · Paperback
EDITIONS
First edition: Passero, 2026
Online edition: OCR, 2026
Kindle edition: Amazon
Paperback edition: Amazon
CITATION
Dolores de Alma Blanca, The Psychopompos & Other Poems, trans. Lanfranco Aceti (London, New York, and Rome: OCR/Passero Productions, 2026).