Jesús Castillo
Whatever fashioned us, its fashioning was nothing
but a woken leaf, shaken
by having only this much time to watch itself dissolve.
Centuries of us became paper to be burned in the houses
of presidents and clerks.
And still we led everyday lives through the waste
and slaughter.
Just today, for example, I am riding a southbound train,
drinking beer and watching the coastline glitter by.
The mountains seldom speak
but they spoke thus: “We hold the future shape
of the world of any walking race that can survive.
The crust of the human will crumple in its casket,
give way to dust and light.”
My veins pulse, hopeful.
And the women work to wake each other up
in the midst of history swiveling.
When the machines do the lifting, the horizon changes.
How will we destroy each other now?
The women hoist the day up from the well, braid their expenses,
singing: “God is the rotting plants that feed the june bugs,
the order and disorder of the world
and we are its hands.”
And they asked the sky: “Is this world fodder
or a seed?”
And they unsewed the sky.
And from the punctures in the air
[ ]
God plays in the eternity of childhood as God plays
in the light that washes the days.
The war machines sigh with spent bodies
and the future is a ghost we must embody,
make alive.
Screens paint illusions that loss
snips, and still the masses insist
on sleep without dreams.
In a city of synthetic moods
the children fight sleeplessness with greed,
uproot dream's veins and change the air of waking.
Let sky and earth and man trade limbs.
God plays in the equation.
“There should still be glowworms.”