2.
If, by the grace of God, I was for an hour Omnipotent
I’d fix the unravelled by the wind hair of the man who
waited in the lobby
exhausted and who descended the stairway like death
with a thousand mouths.
I remember an afternoon, the baby stroller under the trees
the young nanny chit-chatted with the soldier, I went
close; the baby was already a whore in the room 17
the soldier was killed in one of the previous wars
the nanny was stealing bread from the old folks home
and the baby stroller rolled down the road with extreme
speed so much so that the hanged man lost his shoe
and don’t forget the night is too long, no one passed
without some mercy and using a napkin you covered
the wrinkles of the childless closet.
Therefore I stopped reading the classified ads, since to be
fed is equally unethical with the fooling of a dead man
and sometimes the basement deaf woman was hitting
the bucket endlessly
until God cracked and was heard.
The explosions intensified, piles of dead were carried
on carts
mortars uncovered prehistoric bones and this chair
abandoned in the middle of the road
was as inexplicable as you and I;
then everything vanished, the hotel owner with bird eyes
asked for the names
or scared away the flies, boring things to pass the day,
until forgiveness, unknown to the skies, was found,
death that hears better, a coward more selfless than all
of us and, oh time, old worker of the loom, leave a good
story for the end.
Now, before I leave, I’d like to leave a few matches on
the side table
for the person who scared me in the street, to drink a coffee
with the passing dog
who won’t give me up, to give sometime to the girls who
mother Teresa reprimanded when they delayed in their
rooms
to cover my face with heavy withered fabrics, leaving
one of my eyes uncovered
like an absentminded hospital.
If I were a woman I’d lean sorrowfully on the glass
or I’d have thrown my wedding ring in the sewer. Yet
I’m a man and with a poor biography I have to prepare
a just departure.
Libros Libertad 