OF JOY

…it was, it was her and I saw her,
hallelujah!

Joy is and exists, it lives, it breathes;

because undoubtedly she was there, by the wolf's walls, on the summit, at sunset;

I had crossed "The Cut," for I was like a broken, rotting, and wounded creature,
my legs and feet shattered and bleeding, and my arms and forehead covered in splints and flies;

that is why I crossed, to finally fall beside my stone, and, after resigning myself, close my eyes and let myself die;

…but consciousness, purpose, or intention, is a lukewarm passerby under this eccentric torch of bones,
and it errs, and stumbles, and becomes a paradigm of life for a few steps, perhaps for an instant;

It is when the labyrinth is capable of enclosing in the ravines of the soul what was and is,

and the desert presses until it savagely cleaves the heart, fells the mind, and turns memory into a wasteland
of ancient voices that were once blessed, and, in their time, also postponed and forgotten;

… Doña Vera, the hundred-year-old blind old woman, had been abandoned there, in her humble wicker chair,

and she, happy, with her face to the sun and in absolute silence,
smoothed her white hairs with her fingertips,

but also, alas, with her chin held high and her smile shining, illuminating her;

… I would never have imagined Doña Vera dying ablaze in her pure and living death, never;

to tell the truth, no, neither had I imagined mine for this very autumn;

…from the meadows, and above the beech forests, the indescribable flight of the birds arose and soared.

*** Antonio Justel
https://antoniojustel.com
***