Death’s Continuous Stalking

by Roque Dalton (El Salvador)
translated by Margaret Randall

That uniform in Christ’s house
stalks me sure as death.

Oh, proof
of drunken confidence!

Oh, powerful mockery
on serious faces!

(But no one repents anymore. We are
the history of the first
and last humans.
Pity is also useful
when it comes to dying:
it is my country’s finest trademark.)

And if we’re not the desperate ones
it’s because of that thing called imagination,
but oh, how wise we are!

(Because in this way of thinking
the thief ’s ecstasy proliferates.

Then we’ll stab him in the back with a knife.)