Lord, there’s no day that can carry the load
Of living without the help of your grace.
No sun will shine on a land without hope.
The morning there will have nowhere to go,
Like a child who loses sight of its mother,
And then she came, her arms gathering light,
Cradling blooms fresh and scented by young time,
Which history becomes when purified
Of lies, of stories that conceal the graveyard
Behind the scenes of illusory gardens,
And anodyne the people’s sufferings
With short-lived pleasures that ignore the soul
In which resides the healing memory.
Lord, she came like the moment, in due course,
Much like the rosebud which, when we awake,
Is there, appareled in the morning dew,
Image of gain dispelling the night’s losses,
A gift we don’t deserve, used as we are
Often to the uncertainty of having,
From the truth blinded by the sleight of hand
By which the tyrant’s spawn makes fools of us.
Protect and bless her, Lord, as now she blazes
Across the land with the shine of her care
Of the forgotten, of lives on the edges,
The fishermen, the farmers and the mothers,
Who get the promises but not the help
Of politicians, eyes fixed on the pelf
Of their position, mouths dripping with lies.
She moves into the hovels with the silence
Of a thief taking nothing but the trust
Of those in want whom life has made suspicious
Of motive, giving them what they need most,
Hope, the direction of the coming days,
Unknown to them, which by God’s providence,
Begins to stir inside like a young bird
That sees the possibility of soaring,
Exchanging confidences with the wind
About a possible world that is wise
And kind and not given to darkness,
In which the heart and hands are paralyzed.
What does she bring the folk if not herself,
A hand that reaches out, lips whispering
Encouragement, tender of needed help,
And above all the going with the journey,
Being their lamp on nights of the typhoon,
Their roof when rains send them into a corner.
Somehow, she reaches them with heart as compass,
And gets there by bus, boat or motorcycle,
The weather notwithstanding or the stars
Which change their disposition in the night
While we all sleep and dream of better days.
