Ah the sound of the maid’s iron passing back and forth

Ah the sound of the maid's iron passing back and forth
At the window next to where my childhood leaned out!
The sound of laundry being washed in the tank!
All these things are, in some way or other,
Part of what I am.
(O dead nanny, what's become of your gray-haired affection?)
My childhood barely poking its head over the table...
My chubby hand on the edge of the tablecloth that curled...
And Iʾd stand on tiptoe to see across my plate.
Today it's only intellectually that I'm ever on tiptoe.
And my table has no tablecloth, and nobody to put one on it.
Iʾve studied the grammar of failure
In the demonology of the imagination.

PESSOA, Fernando, Forever Someone Else: selected poems, translated by Richard Zenith. Lisboa: Assírio & Alvim, 2013, p. 227