Childhood and Death




To search out my childhood -- My God!
I ate rotten oranges, old papers, empty pigeon lofts
and I encountered my little body eaten by rats
in the depth of the well with the manes of the mad.
My sailor’s suit
wasn’t soaked in the oil of whales
but had the vulnerable eternity of photographs.
Drowned, yes, well-drowned, sleep, my son, sleep.
Child conquered in school and in the waltz of the wounded rose,
amazed by the dark dawn of hairs over muscles,
amazed by its very man who chewed tobacco
     in his sinister flank.
I hear a dry river filled with jars of preserves
where the sewers sing and the shirts stained with blood
     are thrown.
A river of rotten cats that feigns corollas and anemones
to trick the moon and that leans itself sweetly in them.
Here alone with my drowned self.
Here alone with the breeze of cold mosses and lids
     of tin.
Here, alone, I see that they have already closed the door to me.
They have closed the door to me and there are a group of the dead
who play at target practice and another group of the dead
who search for the rinds of melons in the kitchen
and a recluse, blue, inexplicably dead
who searches for me in the stairs, who puts his hands in
      the well
while the stars fill the locks on the cathedrals with
      ash
and the people stay of a sudden with all the little
      suits.
To search out my childhood -- My God!
I ate squeezed lemons, stables, withered magazines
but my childhood was a rat that fled through
      the dark garden
and wore a gait of gold between its little teeth.


Federico Garcia Lorca