THE LIFT OPERATOR
Spring found us unprepared, moody, and indifferent.
Spring is unprepared too; it stops at each step, surprised,
silent under a few trees, it doesn’t question.
Light returns, tired and absentminded, from last summer,
surprised by its rejuvenated youth, it stops at the railing
of the Station listening, in its recovery, to the wordless echo
of its blood, Light assumes the mood of the latecomer.
It shakes the dust off its shoulders as if leaning on a very
high wall for a long time.
However, the guards of the railroads, like the cashiers who
issue the tickets, have a strange gleam on their faces, as if
they stare at an invisible sea and the tickets with numbers
of routes; sometimes yellow, white, light-blue butterflies
fly over fields or sometimes land to rest awhile on the dusty
hat of the retired colonel.
Soon after the lift operator of the next apartment
came out to the sunshine,
a bit lost, extra polite, greeting everyone, known and
unknown,
pleasantly sombre as if he wore the dark cubicle of
the elevator as his coat and
he smiled vaguely behind his long, narrow window.
Libros Libertad 