Joan Margarit

It was left over from the war, the old cloak
of a deserter on my bed(*). At night I felt
the rough touch of years that were not
the happiest of my life.
In spite of everything, the past ends up being
a brotherhood of wolves, melancholy
for a landscape skewed by time.
What remains is love—not philosophy,
which is like an opera—and, above all,
no trace of the damned poet: I am afraid,
but I get by without idealism.
Sometimes, tears slide down
behind the dark lenses of my glasses.
Life is the cloak of a deserter.

(*)At the end of the war, when times were hard, the warm cloaks worn by soldiers were used as extra bedding in most homes.