Doux

El padre

My father traced a question mark in the sky.
The Big Dipper. It was a long time ago.
He knew all the ancient sages living
as names in the stars, and all the stars 
that are frozen in their names waiting 
for time to end and for the universe 
to explode.

The bright little star next to the moon
was moon’s wife. If it was a full moon day
my father would close his eyes and
recite that weird little poem for me,
about how the moon looks like a
burnt piece of bread if you are hungry.

It never looked like bread to me, but 
I learned later that it was a political poem, 
the 60’s manifesto. Only someone
with an unending love for humanity
could write that. The poet died of tuberculosis
at twenty seven. Father always said 
he would have been greater that Tagore
if he had only lived, but that’s the good thing
about dying young, see? You are for forever
a collection of endless possibilities.

My father looked like a mountain 
to me back then, his back smelled of
a secrets and silence, the maps 
of the faraway places he has lived in
etched into his body.

That was a long time back, now 
I don’t care about stars
except in poetry. Now, he only 
smells of the shampoo he uses
and I know for a fact that he 
is cheating on my mother.
He isn’t very tall, now that we 
have our own house we 
hardly go up to the terrace anymore. 
Last week I fought with him 
over something in the newspaper. 
His hair is balding, and sometimes

I can hear something of him
in the way I talk.

Sometimes, I look at his balding head
and feel a well of infinite pity

and it is for that
that I love him still.