An Old Man on the River Bank
,,,I don’t want anything else but to speak simply, let this
grace be granted to me.
Because even our song we’ve loaded with so much music
that it slowly sinks
and our art we’ve decorated so much that its features
are eaten by the gold
and it is time that we say our few words because tomorrow
our soul sails away.
If pain is human, we are not human just to suffer pain
that’s why I contemplate so much these days about
the great river
this image that goes forward between herbs and verdure
and beasts that graze and drink and people who sow
and harvest
and even in great tombs and small plots of the dead.
This current that leads its way and that is not at all
different from the blood of men
and from the eyes of men when they stare straight ahead
without any fear in their hearts
without the everyday shiver about the little things or even
the great ones
when they stare straight ahead like the wayfarer who is used
to find his way guided by the stars
not like us, the other day, looking at the enclosed orchard
of a sleepy Arabic house
behind the lattice, the fresh garden changed shape, growing
larger and smaller
changing as we looked at it; we changed the shape of
our desire and our hearts
at high noon, us the patient dough of a world
that pushes us away and kneads us,
caught in the ornamented nets of life that was right and
then it turned into dust and sank in the sand
leaving behind it only that indecipherable dizzying sway
of a tall palm tree.
Libros Libertad 