My name is Podrigo Tumor and when I think back on myself as a child I can sometimes think back on the ways within which I was fantasizing about growing up, or getting out of our village, or running away, or not being who I thought I was.

And I suppose that's part of every childhood.

But sometimes I think if I were to speak to that child, I'd speak to that child with respect, saying that the things you're using to cope now are things that will be you for the rest of your life.

I have conversations with that child from time to time and I'm curious about what he sees and every now and then I feel like I'm still him.

Sestina by Elizabeth Bishop

September rain falls on the house.

In the failing light the old grandmother sits in the kitchen with the child beside the little marvel stove reading the jokes from the Almanac laughing and talking to hide her tears.

She thinks that her equinoctal tears and the rain that beats in the roof of the house were both foretold by the Almanac but only known to a grandmother.

The iron kettle sings on the stove, she cuts some bread and says to the child, it's time for Tino.

But the child is watching the tea kettle's small hard tears dance like mad on the hot black stove, the way the rain must dance on the house.

Tidying up the old grandmother hangs up the clever Almanac on its string. Bird like the Almanac hovers half open above the child, hovers above the old grandmother and her teacup full of dark brown tears.

She shivers and says she thinks the house feels chilly and puts more wood in the stove.

It was to be says the marvel stove. I know what I know says the Almanac.

With crayons the child draws a rigid house and a winding pathway. Then the child puts in a man with buttons like tears and shows it proudly to the grandmother.

But secretly while the grandmother busys herself about the stove the little moons fall down like tears from between the pages of the Almanac into the flower bed the child has carefully placed in the front of the house.

Time to plant tears says the Almanac. The grandmother sings to the marvelous stove and the child draws another inscrutable house.

Elizabeth Bishop was an American poet and she was alive from 1911 to 1979. This is a poem from her book Questions of Travel which was published in 1965.

This poem is called Sestina. It was originally called Early Sorrow and Elizabeth Bishop was a private person so maybe she thought that Early Sorrow was a little bit too obvious a title and perhaps a little bit too close to the bone of title.

I don't know why she changed it. In a way she changed it to Sestina and Sestina it's an Italian word and it comes from the word for six and it's a particular form, a type of poem.

Sestina has six six line verses and then it's got a seventh shorter verse and the thing that governs these six six line verses is that there are six words and those words appear at the end of every line in each stanza.

The best way to understand Sestina is to know what the six words are and in Elizabeth Bishop's poem the six words are tears, Almanac, grandmother, stove, child, house.

And when you hear the poem a second time you're able to hear how the entire poem is structured around these six words.

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