BLESSED JOY

They confuse you with others, joy

ingenuousness, simplicity,
candor
innocence.

They underestimate you with diminutives

substitute for happiness
eternally impoverished sister of euphoria.

They seem not to remember the icy routine

when demands are drained of blood
and dread imprisons like a precipice.

Don’t pick up the gauntlet, I beg of you,

forget the challenge that ignorance casts out.
Don’t abandon us in the middle of some ocean,
without your light, joy,
the one with outstretched hands
the one who makes the soul a liveable place.

Don’t heed the sounds from the trenches,

the vain rhetoric of the opportunists.
You are the most unique distillate of liberty,
the spontaneous orgasm of the spirit.

Well-found joy
the purest of tastes
the pleasing one
you who live and reign in our cleansed marrow
now and in the dawn of every now
stay with us.