Remember that day in the park,
in the tall grass, hand in hand,
our story had just started.
It was the time when we needed
to assess people and things,
underline in our sky our sympathies.
Remember, behind us that tall young man
came, solitary, silent, with a smiling
beam in his eye that was his way
to greet you, in the distance.
He came with a book in his hand
and lay down in the grass, leaning
on his elbows, reading, relaxed.
—A great guy that one, you said to me,
—famous at school, he never does,
never, what the teachers ask him,
they say he actually laughs at them
and one day, during a lesson
he just stepped onto the windowsill,
hauled himself up and climbed to the roof.
I saw the slender figure with that smile
lingering on the sloping tiles
in a world far off that I wanted
to be my own.
We were silent for a while, mutually
acknowledging the bright red air
of righteousness, the crazy
wisdom of walking away
on the roofs of life.

I am a teacher now and I am lucky:
No student in my class has ever stepped
onto the windowsill to climb away.
If one did that I would be lost.
Looking at me from the roof
he would catch a spark in my eyes
and never come down,
he would just laugh and look upwards.


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