It rains on my childhood
Octavio Paz

I
Standing by the wild north-coast sea I see the rain raining
Behind this lump in my throat is my childhood heaped
We shall nevermore know the island's crude winters
Nor ever again swim nude in the furtive tank
Now careless time presages sterility
And one returns happy to the verses above his room
We ran free through the orchards laden with fruit
We played with our slings in cardoon-sown fields
We did not know in our happiness that we were so poor
Sex had not yet become affront or sin
Our evenings overflowed with stories and myths
The wind rose in the sky to a heart full of goodness

II
Children of sea and limestone with camomile in our eyes
We discovered the names of birds that hid in the woods
On the burning beaches we were arrayed in light
Like Greeks with emery sand our bodies shone
Salt grew in green patios under bunches of grapes
We did not know the world existed and that beyond
The island's coasts there were other gods too
A battered old atlas opened all the ports to me
I read The Odyssey among thickets and pines
Where are they now Son Bou's deflowered paths
And the trails of reeds by green tamarisk trees
Flying over Addaia are peevish gulls
Here there are still gestures of Civil War
Because to write is also to give sense to the world
and to rescue from anguish what is finite and absurd,
I persevere into the night fervently turning words
into emotion and so shore up my life with verse.

Translation from Catalan by Julie Wark