Are You Sleeping, Mr.
President?
If instead of
sleeping
you danced the tango
with your ministers
and your chief of
loves
we would be able to
hear
from night to night
your heels
clacking
like an archduke
or duchess.
We could just laugh
by watching you,
ridiculous as you
are,
waiting for the
applause
of all the frenetic
gendarmerie.
Of course we're all tired
and want a little
entertainment,
monstrous,
like this one
watching you
with a lyre hanging
around your neck,
like a Roman,
or like a blind Roman
woman with absurd
optimistic beliefs.
If instead of promising
the discovery of the
philosopher's
stone
that might produce
bread
and twenty dollar
bills
you'd spend more
time,
because of how
arrogant you are,
selling rotten
potatoes
or rancid corn,
the Indians of this
nation
might call you
Chief Eye of Pearl.
If instead of crying
you'd die one of
these days,
like an elegant pig
with its grease
imported from the
North,
we,
who are tired
of so many stupid
confessions,
would make the stones
dance
and the trees would
provide manufactured fruit.
With your old and
putrid skeleton,
food for rats,
we will fill a single
place on this earth
and we will call it
the Cursed Cave
and people will be
proscribed from seeing
and approaching it
for fear of awakening
hysterical
tenderness.
They call you
José of the dreams,
the one with the
sacred cows,
the owner of the
skinniest cows
and President of the
"Condal Society of Dreams."
Your friends call you
Barbiturate.
How late do you
sleep, Mr. President?
If you adore the cow,
sleep!
If you adore the
calf,
sleep!
And if the General
gives you lunch,
you sleep like a log
or you have a seizure
of drowsiness.
Mud Face,
Eye to see the
Serpents
and call them,
Eye to keep company
and burn you
with humble Kerosene,
Eye to have at your
service
like a cheap bellhop.
Are you sleeping, Mr. President?
I ask you because I'm
a smart young man
unlike you, gentleman
of the siesta.
1962
Caupolicán Ovalles (Venezuela, 1936-2001)
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