From an Old Notebook

A Lullaby

How long this all is, Lord! I will go wherever you will have me, I will do whatever you want me to do. How I suffer sometimes here! But like Mary, I look down upon you, sleeping on my chest, and the cold and darkness of this night vanishes in your slumbering little face. What more could I want? What more do I want? But I still want more! Look how I do everything that I am told, but look how I never pay any attention to you. I worry, I complain, I mock others… and there you lie, asleep, you say nothing, you don’t accuse me of being a hypocrite, of having a cruel heart that your sleeping head has to listen to all day long. Yet you listen to it beating and it gives you rest… you still sleep on my cold heart of stone. The faint thumping of forgetfulness, of an unsettled soul who looks for happiness in something that isn’t you. And yet you sleep through all my sins, my affronts to your little infant heart… and yet you sleep.

I look at the sky and see only darkness, the earth and only frigid dirt of a world destroyed by sin. I begin to worry and turn in circles in my head about what I am going to do, what I am going to say, and what everyone is going to think of me… looking straight ahead, all I see is chaos, the uncertain, my sins, my foul tongue, thieves, wild beasts, a rocky path, and then I look down at you, and you are luminous beyond all light, peaceful, eyes shut, and you turn your little bald head slightly to find a more comfortable spot on that half-dead rock…

and still you sleep.

-Seminario Nuestra Señora Corredentora, La Reja, Argentina
May 13th, 2002