Monterrey Sun
No doubt: the sun
dogged me when a child.
It followed at my heels
like a Pekinese;
dishevely and soft,
luminous and gold:
the sun that sleepy dogs
the footsteps of the child.
It frisked from court to court,
in my bedroom weltered.
I even think they sometimes
shooed it with a broom.
And next morning there
it was with me again,
dishevely and soft,
luminous and gold,
the sun that sleepy dogs
the footsteps of the child.
(I was dubbed a knight
by the fire of May:
I was the Child-Errant
and the sun my squire.)
Indigo all the sky,
all the house of gold.
How it poured into me,
the sun, through my eyes!
A sea inside my skull,
go where I may,
and though the clouds be drawn,
oh what weight of sun
upon me, oh what hurt
within me of that cistern
of sun that journeys with me!
No shadow in my childhood
but was red with sun.
Every window as sun,
windows every room.
The corridors bent bows
of sun through the house.
On the trees the coals
and the oranges burned redhot,
and in the burning light
the orchard turned to gold.
The royal peacocks were
kinsmen of the sun.
The heron at every step
it took went aflame.
And me the sun stripped bare
the fiercer to cleave to me,
dishevely and soft,
luminous and gold,
the sun that sleepy dogs
the footsteps of the child.
When I with my stick
and bundle went from home,
to my heart I said:
Now bear the sun awhile!
It is a hoard—unending,
unending—that I squander.
I bear with me so
much sun that so much sun
already wearies me.
No shadow in my childhood
but was red with sun.
Translated by Samuel Beckett
#EscritoresMexicanos Otra voz (1936)
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