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Luis Benítez

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The extravagant upstream traveler

Then I saw him in the oily water,
a gift from industry and lively hatred,
rising upstream the water:
the impossible salmon,
a brawny monster
all ornamented of green and purple,
of orange and red,
at the livery that only desire lends
to the anxious to reproduce them by all means.
Unusual iridescense between the garbage
of the condemned river,
like a stubborn man
in finding the way that says to him
‘I am your life’, a gift
for the simplicity obstinate in believing
in a stimulus for the tensed muscles
under the harsh scales,
an overdose of hormones
that flood the tiny brain.
And this open mouth to the desire of breathing
still something more than its last day
was keeping the final syllable
of those who don’t let themselves be beaten
neither by their own stupidity
nor by the edges of the piers,
where they never stop, where they
never detain for any reason whatsoever.

 

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