ASTURIAS, Miguel Angel

The President

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I met an angel on the rubbish dump. The light from the flames flickered on the bamboo walls and the straw roof, like the wings of other angels from the hut there emerged a tremulous stream of white, vegetal smoke.

Silence took possession of the house, but it was not the silken silence of sweet peaceful nights, whose nocturnal carbon-paper makes copies of happy dreams, lighter than the thoughts of flowers, less metallic than water.

April nights in the tropics are like the widows of the warm days of March - dark, cold, dishevelled and sad.

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“What a crook!” He banged his fist again, shaking plates, silverware, and glasses. He opened and closed his fingers as if to strangle that filthy crook, but also to choke a shameful social system. That’s why, he thought, the poor are promised the Kingdom of Heaven. What crap! So they’ll put up with thieves like this. Enough of this Kingdom of Deceit! “I promise to make a total revolution from top to bottom, from bottom to top. The people must rise up against these parasites, these opportunists, these lazy good-for-nothings that would be better off working the soil. We will raze, demolish, and destroy this system. . . . Off with the heads of God and all His puppets.”

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There was an ache in his skin, his bones, the roots of his hairs, under his nails, between his teeth. What was true? Having used his cap, not his brain, to think. To keep a group of thieves, exploiters, and arrogant traitors in power is so much sadder than to die of hunger in exile. What God do soldiers serve if His regimes betray ideas, the earth, the human race?

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