Here this creature ended its vast career
as a dark and living rat beneath the starry expanses
its tiny size only humiliates
those who want everything to be enormous
and who can only think in human or arboreal terms
for surely this rat used as well as it knew how (or didn’t know how)
the miracle of its little feet—so close to its snout!—
which were after all just right, serving perfectly
for clawing, scurrying, getting food or beating a retreat, when necessary
So is everything as it should be, O "God of small cemeteries"?
But who knows, who can know when a mistake has been made
in hell’s main office? Who can be sure
that this creation so disdained by the world
but with a world inside it
wasn’t initially conceived to be a prince or judge of nations?
The worries it aroused in housewives and doctors!
Who are we to play at good and evil when they’re beyond us?
Some boy understood the uniqueness of its life
and ran over it with the wheel by which, eye to eye,
the victim and the executioner love each other.
It had no friends? It deceived its parents?
It ran around, a tiny body that had fun
and now just lies there, gooshy, smelly.What sort of conclusion does this poem,
without any exaggeration, merit?
Romantic? Classical? Regionalist?
What end should go to a brave and humble body
killed at the height of its lyrical powers?