I return the joy back to you, my friends.
I don't want it.
I can't remember how to drink it,
neither how to hoist it
nor how to use it, or how to spend it.
Why are you offering it to me?
Don't you see how my hands have dried
from so many prayers bouncing against the void of nothingness?
Don't you see how the light that burst forth
from my soul melted into the shadow
of a life sinking and fading away
after the blood, after the rage?
Embrace it if you want to,
it's yours,
celebrate it while you can,
build over its foundations
the mansion of the untouched
by the grief of those who fall
minute after minute
as I write these words.
I don't want this joy
made of oblivion
and shreds of battles
never won.
Upon what victories is it announced,
among what dreams is it rised?
It resounded over the gleaming April
of my childhood,
tinkled between the reeds and riverbanks
ebullient of tadpoles and water threads.
It was sung to us
as a promise
after the tears left
by the bitterest dungeons.
Was it this?
This waste of days
breaking down like dried leaves?
It does not throb so deep to reach
hitting my heart
with its whisper of future and hopes.
Why are you offering it to me?
It's a bitter chalice
for one who watches the pulse of the things,
astonished,
between the mist of what was,
of what is, and the fateful becoming.
Save its embers until then,
my friends,
don't offer it nor sing it to me.
Because I would not know how to drink it,
nor how to rock it into these arms
twitched by screams,
neither you would know
how to live without it,
without its litany of siren
in the fog of the distance,
in crackling frenzy.
