WORDS FOR A FRIEND CALLED GOD Poem by Mario Rivero

1962
a day like any other day
men have put into orbit
another capsule
the astronaut said that the earth
was a little blue ball with storms
and that You were not on it or out of it
The day grows
strontium 90 is in our breathing
in the light
it falls on the donkeys with their load of flowers
The day grows
the sun stretches out in sweet tongues
on the field
it burns the skin of water and of lovers
and a vapour of fornication rises
The day grows
One becomes tired of being alive
even though one goes on tying the knot of one's tie
even though one hears the rattling
of the machine guns
even though death falls fattening the earth
Finally my friend God
it's 1962
in every calendar
and dark peoples go around still wrapped in their fever
we build houses and bombers
cities we don't know
spread out under their wings
I have nothing else to tell You
I am alone like someone that has just arrived
Maybe I'll buy myself a toy elephant
to give to somebody
and even though You are neither inside nor outside
I ask you from my teeth of wheat
that no one should go away in the summer.

My friend God
You who made the world in seven days
and from whose hand emerged
peaceful valleys and lean hills
I ask you in the name of all
those who say nothing
I tell you from this wood
of glass and cement
that none of them seem evil
when crossing the street
or thinking of themselves as children
I have seen them my friend God consuming
themselves and descending like an avalanche
when the sunset takes possession of the city
chasing the days
that left them one by one
making love and then smiling
as they dried their organs with a paper towel
innocent and hostile toward the dampness of their bodies
Begging for constellations and summers
without knowing that the world is already old
under its appeasement of eternity
and that the bomb will fall
Will the bomb fall on the little blue ball?