I never had a beard. Not even in the photo
that you contemplate now amused,
the young man with eyes
full of impertinence and contrary,
with the turtleneck sweater,
and the long hair
and a dubious cigarette, perhaps marijuana.

Newly registered at the university,
we were all smoke.
The smoke of clandestine classrooms,
the smoke of prestigious books,
the smoke of the nighttime and the bonfires
where we were burning
the prayer book, the fears,
continuing postwar customs,
winters and politicians
who through the years had fermented
their lack of color
on the television sets.

Everything was smoke
and beards grew along with optimism.
When the garden rots
and a poison dirtier than November
injects its yellow into the silence of reality,
cities sleep thinking about the future.
In this way strange paradises emerge.

As if it were today
as if we were all still debating
on the other side of the door,
I remember those turns of phrase,
the imperative voice and the revolution,
a horizon of palm trees
in a poster of Juan
displayed in the street.

Naïve, without a doubt,
the smoke of the impatient beings,
but also the memories of skin,
life on the march,
dissolute kisses on the Street of Angeles
in a time of great decisions.
We refused to cut off our youth
to put it
like a flower in a decent vase.
Sometimes it is possible to agree
with the sea and the forest.

I never had a beard.
Neither have I received the light of paradise,
but I came from there, as you come,
more in disdain than in faith,
tired of the power that humiliates us
and of the powerful who smile,
of the sympathetic knife
and of love in the attics,
of the sordid lessons in fear,
of hair spray on heads,
of the cold stare
and of the solitude in the cities
that sleep in grey and ash
in search of a strange paradise.

That same history
that kissed the flags in order to make off with them,
brought me your body.

More in disdain than in faith,
I stand in the door to the street
without being affected now
by the vacuum the flags have left,
living in complete uncertainty.
Throughout the history of people,
from the bar at the pub
or from the television screens,
I go down with you to the world.
Neither of us insists
on disagreeing,
but the realism of the dreamers
condemns us to doubt
the orderly people, the hungry hearts of the sentimentalists,
the exploiters in color
and the intelligence of the cynics.

Sometimes it is possible to agree
with the forest clearings,
especially in the eyes of a young man
alive with impertinence,
with the turtleneck sweater,
the long hair and the dubious future
in his photographs.