Misterio / Fernando Paz Castillo

Mystery

I

I write this poem
as if it were
the last one.
As if everything I see
now,
around me,
recreates the sign,
and yet friendly,
of thrown-away things,
that were once beautiful:
There are so many
lies I’ve lived!


II

You’re born,
with crying dust
in your consciousness
and, in the corners
of stars,
you learn the smile.
And the first one,
on our face,
barely sketched by it
in the first sensitive
line,
the first noble trait,
the first confine,
intimate
that separates us from other beings.
And opens up the road for us,
the laborious road,
inner soul,
toward its own world,
ignored by oneself,
but it’s so ours
like hands
and like eyes
that touch everything,
offend
or caress
nearby or in the distance.


III

Will this be my last poem?
is the question
I always ask myself,
now,
when I write.
And I feel
in the penumbra of what’ll be,
illuminated instead of reminiscences,
the fear,
of course entrusted,
of a last smile:
Luminous and
peaceful root,
hidden, nearly all of it,
and still firm,
of what couldn’t be.


IV

But I continue, ignoring
if what I’m writing,
attentive to what I’m doing,
will be my last poem
and maybe,
in the brief silence that will follow it
the most beloved.


V

I don’t know if this
will be the song
of my songs,
like I also ignore,
even when I know I won’t need any,
its presence,
at the opportune hour,
what face will assume
my final smile,
the most mine of all,
when I no longer hear any men,
my brothers,
beyond just a distant murmur,
of leaves and breeze,
in an immense desolate night.




Pautas (1973)




{ Fernando Paz Castillo, Poesía, Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1986 }