PAPYRUS TO LAZARUS SISTERS

PAPYRUS TO LAZARUS SISTERS

They walked in the mornings by the monasteries of Betfagé I saw them their eyelids turnout By the insomnia the darkness Of their bodies caused me. I knew the hour of their transit. I knew they paraded naked through the stairs in the woods Before dawn And the lofty murmur of the planets They were Martha and Mary Lazarus sisters, They were like two drops of rain Over the desertic sands of Caparnaum Like twilight's petal Over the misty Tiberíades nights. Despite the second resurrection of the flesh They continue thinking of the raising of the house in three days, Resurrecting Betanio To infect with beauty the scribes of the temple. Even after the Nazarene's death they remained beautiful Beautiful till the fulfillment of the last roads The only thing that differentiated them Was the inscrutable fragrance of their clothes The color of their lips Retouched by the thickness of the woods They walked in the mornings by the monasteries of Betfagé In their vegetal vortex by the river's banks They paraded naked like corn-fly, cajetos or weeping willows In their travelogue toward the lighted lamps in the dark Neither the tile, nor the chicoras or cafhíes Provoqued within me so many beautiful things Like the sound of their voices In the backyard of those remote houses. They were unbearably beautiful Youthful, pensive, Tall, like the silver trees in the synagogues Where they raised their songs And their distant virgin prayers. While a sinner like myself Suffered his confinement, beared his anguish And confronted his calvary. They, the naive ones Doubly naive Three times more beautiful They sang their disdain toward the men of the earth.

Translated by Luis Rafael Gálvez

Taken from: Alexander de Brucco Memories.
Winston Morales Chavarro