Israel Centeno

If you only count ambition and success,
you will count the cost.
No victory comes without a price,
nor an altar without fire.

Your gain is fleeting,
your triumphs, mere flashes
that vanish into the void.
You impose your will,
but death knocks without hesitation.

Though you have never heard it before,
in the final moment,
you will hear the monologue
of Roy Batty in Blade Runner:

“I’ve seen things
you people wouldn’t believe.
Attack ships on fire
off the shoulder of Orion.
I watched C-beams glitter
in the dark
near the Tannhäuser Gate.
All those moments
will be lost in time,
like tears in rain.”

Salomé has asked
for all the heads,
even that of the honored one.
You dance the ember
amidst the dying fire.

The world was placed at your feet,
it fed you with hunger,
cast you from the heights,
and then let you fall.

Without a single gleam,
only dust.

It does not hurry,
it holds all the cards.

Its kingdom is distortion and forgetfulness,
without reply,
without dispute.

If you have placed your toil in gold,
if you have anchored your life in the world,
in shadow they vanish.
Look at the ashes,
it measures them.

Without haste,
without error,
its victory
is almost perfect.

Through Him all was created.

The shoulder of Orion
was a gesture of love.
There is no darkness
near the Tannhäuser Gate.
All those moments have passed,
but in Him, all is abundant,
and He knows no death.

Even the tears in the rain
will be restored.

In the fleeting,
all is transient,
only love
crosses fatality.

Forgive our debts,
as we have forgiven,
and deliver us in the desert
from temptations.

Man does not live by bread alone,
but by the bread of life
that dwells among us.

He has conquered
the temptations of this world,
death itself.

He is the way,
the door,
the light,
and the truth.

He will set you free.