Jaime Torres Bodet

Mid-day

To keep open at mid-day

the windows of the sun-lit patio

overlooking the dining room.

To smell the warm scent of

sun and apples. To say simple things

— things that inspire love.

To drink pure water and in the bottom

of the tall glass see how the corners of

the friendly room converge. To feel

in a peach the roundness of the world.

To know that everything changes

and everything remains the same.

At last to find oneself mature enough

to see in things no more than things:

bread, sun, honey… To be merely

a man who tears petals from a rose

and scratches with his fingernail

a name on a tablecloth…

— translated from the Spanish by Thomas P. Feeny