Parable

By Pablo Armando Fernandez

My  mother wants me to be happy, wants 
me to be young and joyful;
a man who doesn't fear the passing of the years,
nor fears the tenderness or candor
of the child that I should be
when I go from her hand I hear her repeating to me
-so that it's not forgotten- those and other notions,
My mother doesn't want to be ashamed of me.


	My mother wants me not to lie, wants 
Me to be free and simple.
She wouldn't want to see me suffer
because fear and doubt
are faults borne by adults
and she wants me to be her child.


	Whoever sees us won't understand it
because -she doesn't want it said- we coincide in age,
although she gave life to me when she was as old
as I am today.

We could have been sister and brother, she a little older;
we could have been friends, her memory and mine
correspond to a time when we were both young.
(I was younger, but I remember seeing her sing happily
among her children; sharing our childhood)


	My mother wants to see me fight at all times
against pain and fear.
She would suffer if she knew that at my age,
hers then when she gave me life,
I am her old father and she my sweet daughter.
  
				Translated from the Spanish by Nina Serrano

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