“Clases Sociales”

Written by Isabel Pérez Montalbán. Translated by Elena Barcia.

The poor are princes who must reconquer

their kingdom.

Agustín Díaz-Yanes, Nobody Will Talk About Us

When We’re Dead

When he was six years old, my father worked

from spring to spring.

From sunrise to sunset he cared for animals.

The foreman tied him with rope

so he wouldn’t get lost in the ditches,

in the branches of the olive trees, in the streams,

in the winter frost of the gullies.

When it grew dark, he pulled him back easily,

returning him white as snow,

bruised, his hands

trembling and blistered,

and a tangle of abandonment

in the fragile walls

of his pink lungs

and tiny heart.

In his last years he became a child again.

He remembered the proletarian cold,

(now embedded in his bones),

                          the scent of sage, the first silent film,

                          and the bread with olive oil at the hour of the Angelus,                                                                                   

                          the hour of mock nutrition.

But his master, who was kind,

with his leather boots and rain gloves,

took him once, in a horse-drawn carriage,

to the doctor. He does not remember the trip.

When they withdrew him from the carriage he had no pulse,

his fever was above 104 degrees,

and he was about to die,

my father, six years old, of that pneumonia.

My father, six years old.

Original Spanish:

                                                 Los pobres son príncipes que tienen que

                                                           reconquistar su reino.

                                                           Agustín Díaz-Yanes, Nadie hablará de 

                                                           nosotros cuando hayamos muerto

Con seis años, mi padre trabajaba

de primavera a primavera.

De sol a sol cuidaba de animales.

El capataz lo ataba de una cuerda

para que no se perdiera en las zanjas,

en las ramas de olivo, en los arroyos,

en la escarcha invernal de los barrancos.

Ya cuando oscurecía, sin esfuerzo, tiraba de él, 

lo regresaba níveo,

amoratado, con temblores

y ampollas en las manos,

y alguna enredadera de abandono

en las paredes quebradizas

de sus pulmones rosas

y su pequeño corazón.

En sus últimos años volvía a ser un niño.

Se acordaba del frío proletario,

(porque ya era substancia de sus huesos),

del aroma de salvia, del primer cine mudo

y del pan con aceite que le daban al ángelus,

en la hora de las falsas proteínas.

Pero su señorito, que era bueno,

con sus botas de piel y sus guantes de lluvia,

una vez lo llevó, en coche de caballos,

al médico. Le falla la memoria del viaje.

Lo sacaron del cortijo sin pulso,

tenía más de cuarenta de fiebre

y había estado a punto de morirse,

con seis años, mi padre, de aquella pulmonía.

Con seis años, mi padre.