WRAPPED IN NOTHING Poem by Juan Manuel Roca

A priest slapped my face in the schoolyard because I wasn't singing a hymn, and my cheek, after 40 years, is barely returned from that slap.

I saw in the turn of the cheek to the left the country that might have been, and in the turn to the right the burial of a dream.

Coming back from the slap, the house is growing loose like a borrowed coat. Needless to say I still haven't sung the hymn and the hand of the priest to which I never gave the other cheek is wrapped in nothing.