A Mother's Call

You went away on an autumn day—a day of dust and winds and gloom...

I wept beside a mourning tree whose leaves the wind was stripping away, and the dry earth swallowed my tears, and they were as though they had never been...

But there remained the tears of my heart, which fell to the bottom of my breast, stricken, gasping for breath...

I took a handful of earth in my hand and said to it:

"This is how he played with you when he was little; this is how he carried you and sprinkled dust over dust..."

Then I felt the trunk of the tree and said to it:

"Here he set his foot and leapt into your branches and hid among your leaves, sprinkling down on me from your crown grains of rice and beans... If only he would come back, I would paste fresh green leaves upon you and say to him: 'Be little again, my darling; be little again and jump into the trees and hide among the branches, for on the treetop you are safe, as though asleep in my lap...' But he has gone and will not return. I shall say nothing to him, and I shall not paste leaves on your heart. I used to grieve whenever I saw autumn stripping the leaves from you; now I cannot—but I know what it is: the pain of one thing being stripped from another!..."

Then I looked at my hands and said to them:

"If only he would come back small, soft of finger, tender of hand, stretching them out to you and saying: 'Carry me, Mama, I'm tired.' He has gone and will not return... He will not come back small, complaining of weariness and hunger and sleepiness, and we cannot reach him"...

That autumn and that day have passed, my son—the day of winds and dust and gloom—and another autumn has passed, and here I am in a third; but where are you? What are you doing, and what are you saying, beyond the seas and among strangers? To whom do you complain, and to whom do you stretch out your hands?

I wring my hands and wring my eyes and say:

"Come back to me, my son; come back small, soft, and tender; come back to me a child, laughing, crying, complaining; come back however you wish to come—only come back to my breast, that I may clasp you to it and shield you from every harm; come back to me, that I may wind my hands about your neck and never let you slip from me...

But alas, my darling—you will not return...