Río de Canoabo / Vicente Gerbasi

River of Canoabo

Childhood was a glow
in the river’s sun.
At the bottom of the water
the shrimp would move
between white and blue stones.
Happy fish would bend.
And the sun amidst the leaves
of the undulating bamboo
fled in the water
on gold illuminations.
Childhood in the flight of birds,
in the red and black of the troupial,
in the green of the parrots,
in the yellow of the oriole,
in the sunflower of the hummingbird.
Childhood leaping
in the grace of a kid goat
beside its mother.
The domed mountains surrounding
and in the sky the lengthened white clouds
that would take me
to where the world ends.




{Vicente Gerbasi, El solitario viento de las hojas, Caracas: Tierra de Gracia Editores, 1989}