In The Gentle Universe Of The Bee by Luis Benitez in the gentle universe of twenty-three days flies centenary the one falling upon vibrating mouths and the tiny damp slopes where it imposes a stirring of dust and moss torn off by its powerful wing or dances embroidering the air over the rivers it interweaves the forgotten irrigation on the minute forests the valleys hidden to the eye of gardeners oh you who are the black and golden god of other mythologies and melts in the absolute present of one afternoon belonging to us an eternity lost in the minute you know the landscapes of roofs and you are half-air and half-nothingness and without knowing it you sow the rose’s enigma the first weight of green giants the primal impulses of another invisible plant: it is peace where you come from like a living seed all you being at once the germ and the fruit and the frenzied flower of four shaking petals among the fig trees and the proud wall of men. old bee no knowing the number but the partless thing you saw Ovid turn and old man in his metamorphosis and Horace thin upon the Monday bread and today you see me prosing these verses upon another sea the air. and you are not piety but the floating fruit of peace in the motion of the waves forever withdrawn from the identical and singular distant hand. Luis Benitez Argentina >> Staff Author <<