A Letter From Donostia
A Poem
By JOSE ESPINEL
Someone weeps alone in the dark.
That’s how morning broke at camp:
Vince or one of the other boys
Announcing fully in tears
The advent of the worst pox
Adam willed us at age Ten –
To be motherless and far from home.
When we first met
The mountains in Summer,
The sight of the lone thunderhead
Through a dew-stained window
Lingering to scatter the thinning mist or –
The crescendo of bird-song
As the forest warms up to the day
Bound us to our cots;
Bid us to rise as men;
Said men weep at beauty –
Not in fear.
¡Palomo! War horse.
I thought of you often on camp-nights.
In my tearless dreams
I wore brass spurs
And decked you in regalia.
Destiny promised I’d ride
A general’s steed.
Mamá said I would
Because all the generals she’d seen
Painted in Prado
Had green eyes like mine.
Mamá, with her regimental disposition,
Who read me many stories
When Manolo was still alive –
Stories of valor and medals,
White horses and
Bright sabers unrusted
And unused.
In my twentieth year
I’ve come to learn
Loving mothers
Make partial judges.
This Summer is spent
In a trench dug deep and
Filled thick with motherless boys
Who play bridge under oil lamps and
Wish for more bird-song –
Less rain.
Here a few hours are lent to me while
Ordnance rumbles a sleepless night away and
Someone weeps alone in the dark.
Jose Espinel ’20 (espinel@college.harvard.edu) writes poetry for the Indy.