Un Giudice

What does it mean to be
five feet tall,
your eyes reveal it
and the remarks of people,
or the curiosity
of an irreverent girl
who approaches you only
for her impertinent doubt:

she wants to find out if it's true
what they say about dwarfs,
that they are the most endowed
with the least apparent virtue,
among all virtues
the most indecent.

Years go by, months,
and if you even count the minutes,
it's sad to find yourself adults
without having grown up;
gossip persists,
the tongue beats the drum
until saying that a dwarf
is a scoundrel for sure
because his heart is too
too close to the asshole.

It was in sleepless nights
awake by the light of resentment
that I prepared for exams
I became a prosecutor
to take the road
that from the benches of a cathedral
leads to the sacristy
then to the chair of a court
finally a judge,
an arbiter on earth of good and evil.

And so my height
no longer dispensed good humor
to those standing at the bar
calling me 'Your Honor',
and to hand them over to the executioner
was a pleasure all mine,
before genuflecting
in the hour of farewell
not knowing at all
the stature of God.