No Hay

One ordinary day I woke up,
went out to the street as usual
and in my neighborhood I heard the story
talking, bustling around,
going to school with notebooks
and driving old cars.

A friend came and asked me
for a song, a commitment:
I had to say what there isn't,
thing by thing with words,
and every dream that is used
to replace what we lack.

I could start listing
hundreds of exchange goods,
small things without value
and others more useful and alive.
I could say that soap
sometimes takes a little longer
or that to go to a restaurant,
being such a tropical country,
if not in a suit you can't enter.

They want me to say
that in the land of seeds
there is no bread
and no clothes.
They want me to sum up
in four lines our faith.
They want me to say
the words 'that there isn't'.

This country, listen well,
is the country of spiders,
a clod of earth is planted
and one day a mountain grows.
The sowers go naked
without asking for bread or water.

What there is isn't important,
more important is those of us who exist,
even though what there isn't turns to dust
like from a great cavalry.
We are the law that resurrects,
our remains, our life.