Joan Margarit

Once, I was a girl with a future.
I could read Horace and Virgil in Latin,
recite the whole of Keats by heart.
But when I entered the grown-ups’ caves,
they caught me and I started to bear
the children of a stupid, conceited man.
Now I drown my sorrows whenever I get the chance
and weep if I remember a line of Keats.
When you’re young, you don’t know
that you can’t stay in one place forever.
And you marvel if the man or woman
you longed to place your trust in never appears.
You don’t understand, when you’re young, that beginnings
have nothing to do with endings.