Face
Not a day of the year,
not an afternoon nor an hour
can we dedicate to you.
Work comes first
(cutting cane, harvesting
potatoes and tomatoes)
besides which we don’t believe in you,
not even as a symbol,
history, or relic.
As for the children
they go on studying, playing, working.
They have nothing to do with you;
their salvation is in other hands
that won’t let themselves
be nailed to a cross
but would rather
take up arms or tools.
The empty sky is brilliant.
The palms don’t recall the olive trees.
No vestige remains, not a hint
of that wood upon
which you were crucified.
Man and nature are absorbed
in their reciprocal
relations of production, effort, enjoyment.
There is nothing to repent of.
______________(A visit
to the hospitals in this blinding
noon would be like,
when touring a factory,
glancing at the slag heap—)
It doesn’t matter that
a small group may see something.
_____________Tomorrow,
not even a mark
in the dust will remain of them.
Cross
You exist in work and concentration,
in children’s games, and in daylight
flooding the desolate eye
in reborn fire. New flower.
People of good will exert themselves
unconscious of the treasure
they bring to your breast,
or of the air they give you, the
bit of relief their coarse blind hands
offer to your unfinished agony.
You smile through tears
knowing the importance
of the cane harvest
and surely you are
no enemy of lovely potatoes
or red tomatoes,
unobjectionable and right.
In fact, it would please you
as you die
if everything is done well,
with joy and love,
and if people have a decent supper
as you descend to your grave.
Face or Cross
Those who consider their neighbor
and help him
are your disciples. It doesn’t matter
whether or not they know it.
Or if those who once knew you
abandon you.
Perhaps a few
take too much pleasure in your images
and sleep in the pride of your name
having no idea how to honor it.
Forgotten by one or by another,
Ignored, you go on,
depending on your sons, your
nailed hands
(you understand
how a cross puts forth branches):
offer fruit,
_______in sweat and ignorance,
in the forgetfulness of your very being
which is the substance of reality.
March 24, 1967: Translated from Spanish by Kathleen Weaver.
