The grown-ups look down on them where they are playing:
they have found a toad in the garden.
They pull it by its legs and stare at it,
but after a moment of doubt,
marvelling as they discover a bulk
they never believed could be breathing,
they make it fly through the air, and it falls sideways
revealing a white belly, soft and striped.
Stunned, it attempts to straighten itself
and escape from the danger, but they pursue it,
just when there falls at their feet the cigarette
thrown down to them from the jutting balcony
with a cry foretelling the torture
the parents learned many years ago,
when they blew one of them up with a firecracker.
They have made the toad smoke, they have made use of it,
and they have made the dog inhale the docility
of the creature that conceals its dizziness,
clumsily, beneath some leaves.
If they were now to dissect it, belly upwards,
if they were now to slit it open along its length on a table-top,
they would see that the repulsive aspect
hides one of the new triumphs of nature,
which over thousands of years has been being perfected
to turn it into a god, amid the mud,
of a pond of summer gnats.
In spite of this, the children, too ignorant, poke it,
dragging it in circles with a stick they have found,
which is a symbol of the knowledge at their finger-tips,
of their discouragement, not knowing what to do with it.
They are called in to supper, the game is over,
and while they raise more than one cry of protest,
and forget the toy they have been playing with,
the batrachian creeps slowly away,
unsteadily, trailing a sad fate.
Tomorrow when it’s light, and black ants
go marching across its belly,
some heron will benefit from it.