It was there, the straight cypress guarding our secret
in its shade and the doe with its jumping little fawn
we always thought we saw. Images of dreamers,
often in their oneiric raptures, undoubtedly an expectation
of a tomorrow better than today’s misery and
we lived in bodies we never loved as if they didn’t
belong to us; perhaps they belonged to our ancestors,
let them be glorified, and the adulthood we accepted
came slowly with light steps like a cripple with
his crutch that pounds the sidewalk composing
its unearthly melody, like the old coat of the beggar
which he never discarded.
I like those who make virtue their goal and fate. This
is the only way one can be alive and dead at the same
time.

*From “Wheat Ears – Selected Poems”
https://www.lulu.com/account/projects/y26q9n https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BKHW4B4S