Our Daily Bread
(For Spanish translation click here)

for Alejandro Gamboa

Drinks the breakfast . . . Humid earth

of cemetery smells of loved blood.

City of winter . . . The scathing crusade

of a cart that seems pulling

emotions of fasting that cannot get free!

Wish I could knock all the doors,

and ask for I don’t know who; and then

look at the poor, and, while they wept softly,

give bits of fresh bread to all of them.

And plunder the rich of the vineyards

with the two holy hands

that with one blow of light,

flew away from the Cross!

Eyelash of morning do not rise!

Give us this day our daily bread,

Lord . . . !

All my bones in me belong to others;

and maybe I robbed them.

I came to take something for myself that maybe

was meant for some other man;

and I start thinking that, if I had not been born,

another poor man could drink this coffee.

I am an evil thief . . . Where will I end!

In this frigid hour, when the earth

transcends the human dust and is so sad,

I wish I could knock on all doors

and beg pardon to I don’t know who

and make bits of fresh bread for him

here, in the oven of my heart . . . !