But what if God or those who wrote the Bible
forgot to include the cigarettes
and in reality those Biblical figures
spent the day puff-puff-puffing
just like how in the ’50s one could smoke
onboard airplanes and even on television
and I imagine those glorious Jews
raising cigs to their lips
and expelling smoke from their nostrils
while awaiting
visions or God to speak to them,
and I imagine David plucking the harp
in a smoke-webbed temple,
and Abraham chain-smoking
before deciding to kill Isaac,
and Maria lighting up before breaking
the news to Joseph that she was pregnant,
heck, I even imagine Jesus pulling out a cigarette
from behind his ear and scratching a match
to take a breather before addressing the masses
gathered around him.
I’m not a smoker.
But sometimes I get the urge and I smoke
just like this moment as I watch the rain
pouring outside the window
and I feel like I’m Noah when he was waiting
for the flood to cease, and how he walked
up and down the ark just
trying to figure out where he had left
that damned pack.
Translated from the Spanish by Anthony Seidman