Parable 1

By Pedro Rolón
Sunday, February 10, 2013

La noche siempre caerá sin que te des cuenta

 

Listen: The day will end and I will bear witness.

 

I make you sit beside me by the window

to memorize my subject, isolating the sky

from the cypress and the street lights

that threaten the ceramic-urn blue’s

illusion of uniformity, and then it is mine.

 

You explain that my experiment

is not worth its weight in the mosquitoes

I have now invited to bite our skin

by leaving the window open.

 

I am young, and my body gives itself

easily to my science. But the window is my father’s,

 

and he closes it behind me, framing

the new tropes: fog, darkness, a grid

showing the modes of passing time.

 

It is because of you, father,

that night, too fragile for my studies,

will always strike silently, outside of time,

the way darkness is let loose inside the warrior

when he discovers his mortal wound.

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