SELF EPITAPH

When I was only fourteen years old, I wrote this poem with the ultimate desire of having it engraved -at the proper time- on my tombstone. Later in life, I could not understand why a person would think about death at such an early age. But that is the way I was, although most of the times I behaved like the clown of the group. I could jump from pessimistic to optimistic, sad to cheerful, at the blink of an eye. I was -and always have been- a man of many talents and many faces.
I was an incurable dreamer then, with visions of far away lands that I suspected I would never visit, unfeasible feats that I wished to accomplish and material things that, I was sure, I would never possess. How could a poor country boy from such a tiny town ever reach those impossible goals. But I could dream, couldn't I?
Under that dreary and tenebrous cloud I found inspiration for this gloomy poem.
I originally wrote in Spanish, of course, and translated recently to English.

SELF EPITAPH

When my lifeless anatomy reaches the final nest;

when in the eternal sleep my body is laid to rest;

when dust returns to dust -the matter that was me-

place a wreath of dry flowers over my cold pine crate

composed of wilted dahlias, or gardenias all dried

and roses that have died;

they'll symbolized my visions and my illusive fate,

an exact and clear mirror of my doomed destiny,

of my world of crushed dreams -fantasizing in vain-

of all the things I craved but could never obtain,

what I wished to become but could not ever be.

Excerpts from my book MY LIFE/MI VIDA. See details at alvarcorp@msn.com.