COOL LEMONS Poem by Gastão Cruz

Each time we came to the house
of our long dead great grandparents
who had chosen for it
a place in the purity
of absolute earth
as
spring was just beginning
and grandmother would greet the swallows
as if they were the same
returning from the previous year
and the buzzing of the beetles would make me
feel that something was changing
in my days and summer
would be rising and the afternoon heat would swell
my adolescent sex
and before going back to shaking down the almonds
my young uncle in a silence of sweat would be lying asleep
each time we would see
cool lemons
dropping from their tree