Flame

The old songs
took him back to the girl
he met at one in the afternoon.

The tireless Pianola
replayed a scent of cheap talc
a schoolgirl’s blouse and furtive looks.

Those were times when a ravenous man
couldn’t sate his heart’s thirst.

Twenty years later, one morning,
that forgotten pleasure visited him again.

Now she was twenty-four
she spoke a language alien to the bolero
she was the color of snow and a huge ear of corn
crowned her head.

History doesn’t repeat itself, he repeated.

He understood, nevertheless, that life
is made up of gestures.

That morning a gust from time,
had swung that head of hair
stopping everything.

Traslated from Spanish by Rowena Hill