Blessèd Are the Normal

Blessèd Are the Normal

by Roberto Fernández Retamar

Blessèd are the normal, those rare creatures
Who have no crazy mother, drunken father, delinquent child,
Nowhere house, unknown disease,
Who haven’t been burn by devouring love,
Who could live the seventeen faces of the smile and maybe more,
Filled with shoes, archangels in hats,
Satisfied, fat, handsome,
The rintintins and their followers, the ones who grease the wheels,
The winners, the endlessly desired,
Flautists followed by mice,
Vendors and their customers
Knights only slightly superhuman
Men dressed in thunder and women in lightning
The delicate, the prudent, the cunning,
The amiable, the sweet, the edible, the drinkable.
Blessèd are the birds, the dung, the stones.

But let those pass who make worlds, dreams,
Illusions, symphonies, words that confuse
and construct us, those crazier than their mothers, drunker
Than their fathers more delinquent than their children
And more devoured by burning love.
May they descend to their station in hell, and be done with.

Translated by Mark Weiss