Destiny with a Baobab

The town with frills of cardboard quadrilles
Would lead a life of cinema thrills and spills,
While its streets spread out the whispering burden
Merely between showtimes. At five and seven.
The marketplace bearing a famous Swabian name
Would shrink under a proliferating baobab, a frame
Whose heavenward forehead was like a house, with pubs
And pearlescent trains, speeding through boughs and stubs,
With blue stations where we’d sit and smile and drink
Our absinthe from translucent glasses, then we’d sink
Into our stories of life on the brink, sneering and poking fun

At the fish behind the windows, shun in the long run,
That evening when devoted, most tender-hearted clouds
Echoed dogs’ barks and roosters’ crows, grounds and sounds,
And commiserative doctors of snow with Swabian names
Who’d jab and dab, lying ill by their patients, in baobab frames.

English version by Gabriela PACHIA