The Child Poet

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MY FATHER HAS ALWAYS SAID that he was born twice. The first time was to his mother, Josefina, in April 1940, and the second time was as a poet, in January 1951. His life was distinctly cleaved in two by an accident. Before that fateful Saturday he was carefree and confident, the youngest of five brothers growing up in the small Mexican village of Contepec, Michoacán. After the accident — in which he nearly died on the operating table after shooting himself with a shotgun his brothers had left propped against the bedroom wall — he became a shy, introspective child who spent afternoons reading Homer and writing poems and stories at the dining room table instead of playing soccer with his schoolmates.

There are precious few photographs of my father before his accident. One in particular offers a tender portrait of the boy who was left behind, and the scene of his shaken paradise. Frowning in the sunlight, he kneels beside Tarzan, the first in a line of beloved dogs. On the garden wall behind them hang two of my grandmother’s many birdcages, most likely holding songbirds in midchorus.

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