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HOUSE OF MERCY
The father, shot.
Or, as the judge says, executed.
The mother, poverty and hunger,
the petition someone types out for her:
Saludo al Vencedor, Segundo Año Triunfal,
Solicito a Vuencencia (*) to have my children
put in the Casa de la Misericòrdia.
The coldness of her request is in a petition.
The orphanages and hospices were hard,
but the weather was harder.
True charity is frightening.
It is like poetry: a good poem,
however beautiful, has to be cruel.
There is nothing else. Poetry is now
the final orphanage, the last house of mercy.
This is the literal translation of the Catalan and means an orphanage
(*)In Spanish in the Catalan original: Hail to the Conqueror, Second Year of Triumph, I beseech your worship…Fascistic and rhetorical post-war language. Franco prohibited all use of the Catalan language.