VOL II

Vol II - Mirror

[Chapter I - A Man] 

A mirror expects a smile 

in exchange for his reflection,

of the salvation it offers to the man who does not want to bend down and kneel

in front of a body of water.

That man who does not want to accept the sublime power of nature.

I came to this earth to listen to music, 

I came to this earth to confess in the wrath that blossoms from every drop of rain. 

I lived in that hour that quickly and smoothly passes by, 

A centenary child playing with cubes and trembling hands full of calluses, pastels of wax. 

A child, namesake me, expects a smile in exchange for his pain, the shards of glass stuck in his heart 

from whose he distills blood, oh wine, which he offers to the man he does not want to love. 

[Chapter II - Memory] 

I remember my father's tired and dry face from the days of August. His thumb had yellowed from peeling mandarins during the hot and sultry days when even a sip of water felt like baptism.

Silent hoeing among the dry soil between ants and cicadas, with his head covered by two shacks of patches with holes where the casseroles for the winter jars were usually kept.

Those acres of land that seemed endless on foot were confined by a shabby fence that had probably been erected before the first of our six generations set foot there. Beyond the fence, a rusty padlock and the silent pact of roses breathing at the edges of the sheds, there was nothing around for miles, the first building that stood out on that plain of dirt and mud was an old inn that belonged to good family acquaintances and who, from time to time, heated the wood oven and offered a coffee and a pizza in the evening when we returned tired from a long summer day spent under those shacks.

I don't remember much of those times, except for the suffocating smell of fumes that the van parked at the entrance next to the shacks produced, which often poisoned every good will to start the morning. On holidays and especially spring days, the whole family huddled up there, next to that metal beast and organized barbecues under the shade and feeble protection of the patches that covered the structure. One hot summer evening, with tired arms and legs and a full stomach, I headed towards the well as rumor had reached my ear that there was a beehive around them, obviously false voice. Near the well there was a body of water that filled a natural hole in the grass, rough and not very pure water. I knelt to observe the concentric circles that broke at the edge of the pool and saw them for the first time my face and my mind. It was the first time since an organic, real reflection lay between that dirty water. It was the first time since I felt alive, and my heart was beating in time with the light breeze. That rough pool, full of desire that burned to flow into the sea, not to remain still in the earth concave like a worm, was an ironic representation of what I then became, of what we all of that family then became.

The sky, purple as a livid, was still, dotted with a field of soft white mines. The chilling roar of the van spitting smoke on the other side of the field shook me from my silent dialogue with the mirror of water and I came back with little more than a memory that I didn't care at the time.

That was the last summer I spent there under the shade of the oaks before even the last thing we owned was taken away from us.

It was the last time I met the snakes lying near the well.