Bill Carpenter Poem

Disario de Noticias

In Small Memories
Saramago tells us he taught himself to read
by scanning his father’s newspaper,
studying sentences as a child might a train
of words strung together
along the tracks of the page.
Determining one to be the engine
pushing it along,
the conductor of a span of words;
and another the energy
turning the wheels, moving the thing forward;
eventually recognizing the content of each boxcar,
deciphering this daily Rosetta Stone
until he knew enough to read aloud
to his astonished parents,
words forming on his lips,
now blackened with printer’s ink,
spilling from the smoky
tunnel of his mouth
into the air,
a train derailed
and reconfigured
onto the pages of his books.


© by Bill Carpenter