THE LIFT OPERATOR
One night, when all the offices were empty and the last
cleaning lady had left and the building with its mopped
staircase was completely all alone and empty, the lift
operator pressed the button to the seventh floor, to go up
to the roof and breathe some fresh air.
The elevator didn’t stop on the seventh floor; it passed
the eight, tenth, and twentieth floors — no one was around.
It passed the roof, reached the terrace, and the lift operator
recognized the cemetery cypresses, he recognized
behind his long-narrow window, the tall exhaust chimneys
of the brick masonry,
then nothing else of the city, then the stars, then
the indiscernible events of the moon and the lift operator
going up vertically
standing, frightened, rigid — if he is leaning a bit
his cubicle could also lean and dive into the space
then, he remembered his children, his wife
and unconsciously, he uttered the word bread; all
of a sudden, the lift started its regular movement:
it descended to the familiar main floor.
The operator opened the narrow door
walked out to his familiar hallway, feeling strange,
that life is so paradoxical, simple, and eternal.
Libros Libertad 