Yes, your childhood now a legend of fountains
-Jorge Guillén

Yes, your childhood, now a legend
of dust, knows the gray road
setting out to cross the desert of the past.

And how, always just ahead, the gray water
of happiness glitters, happy to be just a mirage.
Who steps off the gray bus at the depot

now just a shadow of its former self?
Dust fills the sky. Sidewalks shudder
all the way home. Blinds close their scratchy eyes.

Who takes over your old room? Dust.
Your teenage solitude has nowhere to hide.
The soul must return to the body;

it makes the soft parts move.
Like those who live on the dead,
it moves toward the eyes.

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This article originally appeared in The New Criterion, Volume 24 Number 6, on page 28
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