Breaking home ties, 1954
I guess it must have been a small station,
a long way from the ranch. There are no other passengers
waiting for the train, and in the middle of every field
the grasshoppers go on crunching, like an endless torment.
Youthful excitement shines in the alert eyes of a boy,
who lets a glance of resolute impatience stretch out
into the far-off distance that melts the rails
at a point on the horizon. The sad eyes of a dog
gaze wearily towards this same place,
not knowing what is afoot but intuiting loss
and he leans his muzzle on the knee
of his younger master, as he has always done,
waiting for a hand that has gone on growing in size
and which he begins to miss: both palms grip
the lunch parcel, tied with pink ribbon,
which his mother gave him before saying goodbye
and dwindling, waving her hand from the porch.
Beside him his father, with back bent
from so much hard toil between soil and cattle;
holding tightly in his hands his hat and the new one
bought for the boy, who wears for the first time a beige suit
and a tie they dug out of the wardrobe.
The father’s deep eyes gaze downwards at the soil –
that has made him sweat and sweat, that the sun has baked,
that has burned his skin – where the tracks lie
which are to carry the boy away, far away from this life,
to a northern city with teachers and books.
Stuck to his lip, a cigarette dangles,
yet to be lit, and between his fingers a match
ready to be struck when the train appears
and, at the moment of farewell, a firm hug,
man to man, that may cause his eyes to moisten:
he will say, then, that the smoke got in his eyes.