Claudia

I keep finding poems which Dad dedicated to family friends whom lost a child. This one is from his book Commemorations (Conmemoraciones).

Claudia

I still think like I did then.  The same melancholy

when I observe how

my very dear children show off their lives

while the years cloud over your memory.

When you died I spoke about your innocence,

your liveliness, your first letters,

your half understood reading,

the school shoes that do not take you anywhere anymore,

the backpack that does not carry books to school,

the bus in which you no longer count as a passenger,

your empty house, your dolls,

even the opened bottle of medicine, the unused clothes,

and the hand me downs used

to help the needy children

and I spoke about your sad brother.

Now when I mention you

I tremble

just thinking that all the anguish that hardened your world,

your little abandoned universe,

were to burst into the happiness of my children who move forward

on the roads that I start to leave.

To Gilberto and Alba.