When the Power Went Out

It was the month of July,

The grandchildren had come,

Their little tents were set up,

Their fingers were on fire.

Each one sat in a corner,

Talking electronically,

And every now and then they laughed.

One was making tweets,

The other going beep-beep,

Texting from here,

Tweeting from there.

Their little heads were down,

Their little fingers on fire,

Not a word could be heard.

I tried to ask them

What they wanted to eat,

So I could go and shop

Before they started to get hungry.

Without lifting their heads,

They told me what they wanted,

And I went straight to the market,

Filling up the cart—

Lots of macaroni with sauce,

And various little fruits.

While I was shopping for lunch,

Inside the store,

Suddenly the power went out,

And silence fell.

We went to pay—

The registers would not open.

The technician came

And opened them by hand.

There were three cash registers

And three young girls,

All gathered at the same one,

Packed like sardines.

Everyone started to panic,

They didn’t know what to do,

They got confused with the change

And began to lose their minds.

The manager came running

To be present too,

They all seemed to me

As if they were ten years old.

Their “nuclear” fingers

No longer shot out fire,

The whole world was shouting,

Their ears were ringing.

Pencils and notebooks beside them

To make the calculations,

To count out all our change—

And they didn’t even know how.

From what it seems,

In this society of ours,

If we don’t have electricity,

We are all swept away.

God help all of us—

Let the power not go out,

So that our grandchildren

Will always have a warm meal.