Her smile still lingers,
A sunstroke on a windowpane
A mirage view shimmering
Through the glass shutters of that convent.
Along the corridors
The nuns paced saying their orisons,
Touching the smooth, worn rosaries
Counting the prayer beads of their days.
We read together, knowing little of life,
That young teacher, and her students,
Lyrics and sonnets on love, on immortality,
Unprepared to write our own elegies.
The rocks loomed over,
Dark hulks,
The township cowered beneath the pall
Of their shadow, threatening the gold-
Fish thoughts that swam both lucid and gold
Through that lake of illusions.
The thirsty tortoise sun
Gulped in the fresh rain that fell
On those scorching days, on saints’ days,
On days dedicated to the Virgin Mary,
To Saint Roch, cooling the fever burning
My forehead as I tossed restless
On my iron bedstead listening to the
Angelus bells and the Ave Maria from
The convent cloisters.
Later, but not long after I had gone
Away, departing from that fortress
Of high walls and those iron gates
That threatened to lock me in forever,
I heard she had died,
Set herself on fire.
All I have is now the feel
Of her remembered gaze,
Limpid eyes,
Resting on grasshopper hours
We shared in that brief season;
Now memory crawls, wings shrivelled,
Body desiccated, dragging itself through
Dusty blades of burnt-out grass
In Time’s parched, unending drought.
Only the ant remains,
Living out its fables,
Garnering the harvest for winter’s
Lean days, its storehouse of seeds and
Grain never empty, replenished day by day,
That grasshopper summer vanished,
Consumed with age, silenced forever, its song.
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