Mis Recuerdos

My memories pile up, mother, so distant the memories
of my early years
with my sugar cube boat sitting on a table
Gelín went to school
and while father and you and the sacks of flour
struggled uphill
they were years of anguish, of black market and fear
of fighting in silence.

And the yellow house with its four windows
so damp and so clean,
the courtyard and the orchard, the salary and the oil
that you stretch and never reach
and my first school and your slender body
of work and miseries
to fill the house with warmth and the sorrow
that suffocated at the table.

The patio and the cherry trees, the dog and the blacksmith
with his serious silence
the fair Sundays looking for the best price
to buy a pig
and when Saint Rita arrived, I wore new shoes
you sent us to mass
and then in some meadow we four ate
the bread and the omelette.

The stone path that climbs to the village
where grandma lives
grandpa and Laureano, Tula and that room
smelling of apple tree
and those fields so green, the mines and the men
of my burnt Asturias
in what valley or path, in what stone, in what river
did my childhood stay.