LAST STOP
…and then turned into pastures for the water buffalo
fields for sugar-cane and corn.
We come from the desert sand and the sea of Proteus
souls withered by public sins,
each of us with his office like a bird in its cage.
The rainy autumn in this gorge
festers the wound of each of us
or what you may otherwise call nemesis, fate
or just bad habits, fraud and deceit
or even the selfish urge to gain out of the other’s blood.
Man smartens up easily in wars
man is soft, a bale of grass;
lips and fingers desiring a white breast
eyes that squint in the day’s radiance
and feet that would run, even if tired
at the slightest whistle of profit.
Man is soft and thirsty like the grass,
insatiable like grass, his nerves roots that spread;
when harvest comes
prefers that the scythes whistle in the other field;
when harvest comes
others call out to exorcise the demon
others get entangled with their riches, others
deliver speeches.
But what can you do with the riches, exorcisms
and speeches when the alive are far away?
Perhaps man is something else?
Perhaps it is him who transmits life?
Time for sowing, time for harvest.
You may say, friend, it’s the same again and again.
But the refugee’s thought, the thought of the captive
the thought of a man who ended up being a commodity
try to change it, you can not.
Perhaps he would have preferred to stay king of the cannibals
spending strength that nobody buys
sauntering among the agapanthi fields
hearing side drums under the bamboo trees
as the courtiers dance with their monstrous masks.
Libros Libertad 