Permanence

Where is the child that I was?

Don't say it got buried in weary grammar

of the yellowish past

do not say that lies filed among the letters that time has

they smell musty on the cardboard

between cold sentences of school grades picked up one day

with both fear and expectation

or that lost color like flowers pressed into withered albums

that no one will open anymore.

Because I do know that boy where he is.

In the beats that accelerate when like a ghost

a memory becomes corporeal

in the retina that vibrates perplexed to see that the new century

still infatuated and nothing changes

in the breath that at times is missing submerged

under the deleterious fold of the waves

in the footsteps that commemorate dates ...

the gravel on the graveyard trail?

Something remains, I want to believe it, of the child that was.

The curiosity remains, the dry mouth that virgin demands

the soothing nectar of knowledge

naivety remains, candid postulant of a faith that rocks

in the cradle of a better white tomorrow

the restlessness, vitamin energy of a daring, reluctant spirit

to remain with folded arms

Oh, my youthful hope, wisp that neither today nor ever

the years will be able to degreen!

Sant Feliu de Codines, 18-8-2001