Last will
by marcos Valerio Cisfuentes Reyes
translation by willy palomo

My father is dying
inside a public hospital
slowly
panting like a poisoned dog.
He cannot move his hands,
the same ones
that would trade candles for bread
or pull off his shoes
to go to school as a child.
He squeezes his trembling mouth
so that no one hears the interrogation
he levels against God.
He has grey eyes.
It’s a lie, mijo
he tells me,
there is no light or meadows,
there is only the lawn at my parent’s house
the chicken in the fire
and my mother’s birth pangs
once again.
He asks that I do not buy flowers for his tomb
because death is a lie
as is heaven
And hell, pa?
I ask
Hell is real
He gave me the impression that he was raising his hand
to show me exactly where it lay
but in that precise moment
he died.
I close his dead eyelids
with a pachyderm’s solemnity
and imagine my grandmother young once again
birthing
and hope this time it is not in hell.