LAZARUS

Lazarus

To Jader Rivera Monje.

Now that I am so many things at once

Now that I assume my former lives

And throw them to the flesh or the mud

so they become poems

or little leaves that face

The crisp air of Zaire

They call me Lazarus.

I am Lazarus

Son of Bethania

Brother of Martha and Mary

I have known death

The river of roses, gladioles, violets, myrth and lilies

That i have journeyed, navigated and breathed

The four days that lasted

That Odyssey through the fascinating world of shadows.

I am Lazarus

I have seventy names

Music, wind, bird, ox and rain

Are some of them

I believe in resurrection

In survival

In the warm breeze that go far

Beyond these tribes

I have risen from the mud nine times

And now

I am the dust that does not turn to dust

My hands and feet

Arer still tied up with funeral garbs

But it is also true

that under my body grow the herbs

the worm, the centipede, the fragrant calambrinas

The seagull that takes off in a flight

looking for other air currentes.

I am Lazarus

Inhabitant of Bethania

Friend of the synagogues

Of Canaan, Carfarnaum, Nazareth, Galilee

and other distant lands

whose names you would not understand

My face is covered with a cloth

But every time I rise to life

Every time a butterfly

reminds me that a I have been born again

The cloth gives way

To other stars, other lights,

New animal species, other roads.

I am Lazrus

In this trip at the end of life

I will seat on another rock

To spin the sacred cord

The piece of river

That sends me back to another current

Where all the voices claim,

All the musicians sing,

All the rains say:

“Lazarus, arise!"

Winston Morales Chavarro

Translation: Luis Rafael Gálvez