Translated by Jonathan Harrington
God gave me an editing job.
Between dreams I would mark the errors,
all the way from a primordial Alpha
to an impending Omega still under construction.
I saw the universe in rough draft.
There was very little love in long paragraphs of human history.
The most serious errors were ones of conscience
but those were left uncorrected—
well, it was not my job.
Human acts, like it or not,
are indelible.
Today an angel revealed to me
that my check was not yet ready;
it had to be approved by Saint Peter,
who willed to Judas the accounts of heaven
and on the other hand, the pay would be eternal
when Creation is finally finished.
And in the meantime—how do I live?
How do I eat? With what do I pay rent or transportation?
Who will save me later from the Purgatory of the credit bureau?
Now I understand why they say we are made in the image of God.
On Earth, everything is the same. But I’m not lifting my red pen.
I throw into the fire all my corrections.
Let them solve their own problems.
I hope humanity will correct itself
if it believes in a Destiny poorly written in some dead language
with that beginning and end imposed from above,
in the endless spiral of time
where no one is in the least interested
if I am paid or not.
Fernando de la Cruz Herrera (Yucatán, México, 1971) holds an MA in Spanish from Ohio University and a BA in Philosophy. As an independent editor, writer, translator, and cultural promoter, he has participated in cultural festivals, conferences, and book fairs in Mexico, Cuba, France, and the United States. His poems appeared in the books “Redentora la voz” (Ayuntamiento de Mérida, 2010), “Aliteletras. De la a a la que quieras” (Dante, 2011), and in the chapbooks “La cuenta regresiva. Radiografía urbana mesozoica” (El Drenaje, 2012) and “Seven Songs of Silent, Singing Fireflies” (JKPublishing, 2008). He has received two national, two regional, and one state-wide poetry awards in Mexico. Given Mexico´s growing violence and corruption, his stand as a satirist has become “Better laugh than cry”. Still, his main passions are poetry (which he often finds in theatre, music, film…), language teaching made fun, and the constant discovery of the flavors, shapes, and depths of human life. Email: delacrux@hotmail.com.