Child Bomb
Rent from DeepDyve- Child Bomb
The boy lifts a hand to his tooth,in doubt.The bombs have not blown him up.His entire bodyshakesand he doesn’t knowif he should removehis underpants.He cannot showhis tiny and defenselessbelief in himself.He doesn’t know he is in front of the camerasnor does he even think about it.Whatcan the boy think?Go backto being a plain body,a trembling,a slight gesture
which the camera fastens onlike an oil of peace.We are allthis hunger for life.Prayerin a voidaround evil.A gesture which is everyone’s, [End Page 46] a childish shame,the naked bodythat wants to preserve itselfand grow.And so,this vision of the child’slike a slow oilwraps itself round us.We must make hasteto protect it,remove it from this scene,paralyzed with horror.That which did not happen.Now the childand his guardsand ourselvesare that oil,that oily and necessarywarmth. [End Page 47]
Pedro Serrano is a Mexican poet, critic, and translator who teaches at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (unam) in Mexico City’s Federal District. He is the author of five books, most recently Nueces. His translations include the anthology of British poetry La generación del cordero (The Lamb Generation), a volume of Matthew Sweeney’s poetry, and Shakespeare’s King John. He recently published La construcción del poeta moderno, an essay on T. S. Eliot and Octavio Paz, and Aligeren la oscuridad, an anthology of Edward Hirsch’s poems. He is the editor of the online poetry monthly Periódico de Poesía. He was granted a Guggenheim fellowship in 2007.
Anna Crowe is the former artistic director of StAnza, Scotland’s poetry festival, and the author of two Peterloo collections, Skating Out of the House and Punk with Dulcimer. Her book Figure in a Landscape (Mariscat) won the 2011 Callum MacDonald Memorial Award and was a pbs Pamphlet Choice and published in Catalan and English. She has translated poems by Joan Margarit, R. S. Thomas, and Pedro Serrano and is a recipient of a Travelling Scholarship by the Society of Authors.
