The shadow on the grass
Íñigo Aragón
Logroño
1974
Like everyone else, we were history under the black sky. Dressmakers, salesmen, teachers of any year in this Spain of mine, this cowhide, this dead Spain. Sun and shade, car and blanket, a picnic in a ditch in a landscape just like any other. Silhouettes against a background, people now, absences now, always nothing. A wedding gown, a long military service, a dream in stereo, hills, rock and scrub.
Countenance on a face, as God wished. Several brothers, king prawns, cut out women, playing cards in a dump and a child who is born without a promise, grows up strong and healthy and becomes another. This is us then. Small game, inshore fishing.
We were your parents, your grandparents, maybe yourself decades ago, when our houses were barracks and we sat around a table waiting for visitors, hand on hand on a cold hand.
Spaniards: he is deceased.
From these ashes we come.
We were the ones who muttered in the afternoon mass. Double showing and a stroll to the same place. On our body, any given body. Confined at home on a Sunday evening, the kids in the kitchen. Your memory in another mind.
What for were we ever twenty?
The car won’t start.
