THE SECOND DEATH

He came on a day as plain as any other.
When I saw him, he dragged the most rotten rags.
He was bittersweet for my taste and too meek to our daze.
If I strolled on my own, his steps also stamped on my road.
If I slept, and the world abandoned me in forgetfulness,
he would keep up wide awake to my dreaming.
I couldn’t tell what his silences hushed to me,
what his gesture added to mine,
as a glass to the water.
I didn’t know who he was,
though I had long waited for him.
 
Gradually, he conferred voices to all things,
and gave to the ways more than determination – straying.
Now I realize in all experience
reasons that overfeed on the lush of my senses.
I know there are under the sun things
we became so acquainted with
that we will never manage to explain.
 
A thudding of fast feet ran through the fields.
I raced unbridled to escort the newcomers.
A body tilted from a breathless horse:
it was the messenger, I would hear me from other lips.
I lifted his hood and found no face;
I felt his wrist and he was deceased.
 
I ripped the ground, in despair I pulled the hair of the earth.
It was him, the eternal embodied in human flush,
the delegate sent only too late.
And now none could be saved.
I reckoned: there are no reasons to this world.
Or rather, there are just plenty.
But one thing is to learn them.
The worse, the terrible is,
getting them learned,
be able to have them lived.
 
My groaning and weeping softened the harsh in the rocks.
Eventually I came back where I was.
I don’t know his current whereabouts,
I guessed he must have found another garden,
where by sunset the salt in the earth sets afire.
I believe so far I could recognize him,
if he happened to arrive.
But those are tales I tell for myself,
when the night is ripe and I can´t
get to grips with my rest.
 
Now I must go the same roads,
and tread on my feet the same old void of the world,
without considering where I am carried along,
amidst the cities’ whirlwind and the men’s maze.
And pretend serenity when the shades bleed,
as though the day didn’t hallucinate
and the stones didn’t scream.
 
On that massage depended where the way was headed for.
It got lost for good, and the path to travel,
empty of exits or destinations, can never finish.
I wished I had never seen him.
I don’t think a second coarpse could repeat it for me.