La Reversible

John Ciardi nació en Boston, Massachusetts (Estados Unidos) en 1916 y murió en Edison, New Jersey, en 1986. THE GIFT In 1945, when the keepers cried kaput Josef Stein, poet, came out of Dachau Like half a resurrection, his other half eighty pounds still in their invisible grave. Slowly then the mouth opened at first a broth, and then a medication, and then a diet, and all in time and the knitting mercies, the showing bones were buried back in flesh, and the miracle was finished. Josef Stein man and poet, rose, walked, and could even beget, and did, and later died of other causes only partly traceable to his first death. He noted - with some surprise at first - that strangers could not tell he had died once. He returned to his post in the library, drank his beer, published three poems in a French magazine, and was very kind to the son who at last was his. In the spent of one night he wrote three propositions: That Hell is the denial of the ordinary. That nothing last...