They walked in the mornings by the monasteries of Betfagé
I saw them their eyelids turnout
By the insomnia the darkness
Of their bodies caused me.
I knew the hour of their transit.
I knew they paraded naked through the stairs in the woods
Before dawn
And the lofty murmur of the planets
They were Martha and Mary
Lazarus sisters,
They were like two drops of rain
Over the desertic sands of Caparnaum
Like twilight's petal
Over the misty Tiberíades nights.
Despite the second resurrection of the flesh
They continue thinking of the raising of the house in three days,
Resurrecting Betanio
To infect with beauty the scribes of the temple.
Even after the Nazarene's death they remained beautiful
Beautiful till the fulfillment of the last roads
The only thing that differentiated them
Was the inscrutable fragrance of their clothes
The color of their lips
Retouched by the thickness of the woods
They walked in the mornings by the monasteries of Betfagé
In their vegetal vortex by the river's banks
They paraded naked like corn-fly, cajetos or weeping willows
In their travelogue toward the lighted lamps in the dark
Neither the tile, nor the chicoras or cafhíes
Provoqued within me so many beautiful things
Like the sound of their voices
In the backyard of those remote houses.
They were unbearably beautiful
Youthful, pensive,
Tall, like the silver trees in the synagogues
Where they raised their songs
And their distant virgin prayers.
While a sinner like myself
Suffered his confinement, beared his anguish
And confronted his calvary.

They, the naive ones
Doubly naive
Three times more beautiful
They sang their disdain toward the men of the earth.

Translated by Luis Rafael Gálvez
(Los Ángeles-California)
Taken from: Memorias de Alexander de Brucco.