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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=569322" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Port Bou</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">As a child holds a pet,<br>Arms clutching but with hands that do not join,<br>And the coiled animal watches the gap<br>To outer freedom in animal air,<br>So the earth-and-rock flesh arms of this harbour<br>Embrace but do not enclose the sea<br>Which, through a gap, vibrates to the open sea<br>Where ships and dolphins swim and above is the sun.<br>In the bright winter sunlight I sit on the stone parapet<br>Of a bridge; my circling arms rest on a newspaper<br>Empty in my mind as the glittering stone<br>Because I search for an image<br>And seeing an image I count out the coined words<br>To remember the childish headlands of Port Bou.<br>A lorry halts beside me with creaking brakes<br>And I look up at warm waving flag-like faces<br>Of militia men staring down at my French newspaper.<br>'How do they write of our struggle, over the frontier?'<br>I hold out the paper, but they refuse,<br>They did not ask for anything so precious<br>But only for friendly words and to offer me cigarettes.<br>In their smiling faces the war finds peace, the famished mouths<br>Of the rusty carbines brush against their trousers<br>Almost as fragilely as reeds;<br>And wrapped in a cloth - old mother in a shawl -<br>The terrible machine-gun rests.<br>They shout, salute back as the truck jerks forward<br>Over the vigorous hill, beyond the headland. <br>An old man passes, his running mouth,<br>With three teeth like bullets, spits out 'pom-pom-pom'.<br>The children run after; and, more slowly, the women,<br>Clutching their clothes, follow over the hill,<br>Till the village is empty, for the firing practice,<br>And I am left alone on the bridge at the exact centre<br>Where the cleaving river trickles like saliva.<br>At the exact centre, solitary as a target,<br>Where nothing moves against a background of cardboard houses<br>Except the disgraceful skirring dogs; and the firing begins,<br>Across the harbour mouth from headland to headland.<br>White flecks of foam gashed by lead in the sea;<br>And the echo trails over its iron lash<br>Whipping the flanks of the surrounding hills.<br>My circling arms rest on the newspaper,<br>My mind seems paper where dust and ink fall,<br>I tell myself the shooting is only for practice,<br>And my body seems a cloth which the machine-gun stitches<br>Like a sewing machine, neatly, with cotton from a reel,<br>And the solitary, irregular, thin 'paffs' from the carbines<br>Draw on long needles white threads through my navel.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Stephen+Spender">Stephen Spender</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=569322" data-title="Port Bou de Stephen Spender" data-description="As a child holds a pet,
Arms clutching but with hands that do not join,
And the coiled animal watches the gap
To outer freedom in animal air,
So the earth-and-rock flesh arms of this harbour
Embrace but do not enclose the sea
Which, through a gap,..."></div>
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