The notebook

I was looking for a book someone had asked me for and a notebook turned up, covered in brown wrapping paper, faded, I opened it, the yellowed pages, which are paper's gray hairs, carried me back to the past. It's my poetry notebook, from when I was 13 or 14 years old and used to go to a library in La Boca to study elocution. I remember the trip took an hour, but I never missed it, even when it rained and La Boca flooded.

I opened the notebook and the poems appeared. Alfonsina Storni with her «all that suffering, tortured, I think that without meaning to I have set it free». Then Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz «Foolish men who unjustly accuse women, without seeing that you are the cause of the very thing you blame». Machado with his «The crime took place in Granada, in his Granada». And Federico García Lorca «and I took her down to the river, thinking she was a young maiden but she had a husband». Alberti and his «black hand reaches for the white, white hand reaches for the black». Fernández Blanco «All disheveled, apron torn, that's how I love you more».

The memories keep coming, the emotions, the verses to the homeland appear, to the symbols that were exalted with love and pride and today are withered like my notebook. I remember the poem by Constancio C. Vigil «Blessed be peace and its harvests, blessed be love and its fruits». A childhood friend gave me his poems, little Josecito, and it says «sometimes, my friend, I miss you so much», and the gauchesque poetry with its «Here I sit down to sing to the beat of my guitar», it has no light-blue ribbons or white or red ones, it's guitar with a flag, it's nothing more than guitar.

And the memories keep coming, and Obligado with his «What a relief to come back from the roads that lead nowhere», the poems to the mother, Gabriela Mistral with the poem to the unborn child, and I keep turning the pages and I'm growing drowsy with the notebook on my lap and my hands embracing it so the memories won't get lost in time.