The X on Treasure Island

Another four o'clock arrives
and still, no translation.
They're giving a class
in the old PD building
where I remember
that first Barbie. She
was attached at the time
like all women,
to some type of soap.
It started with the Gold Rush
and ends with this building,
the PD Merc which is now
a day orphanage for kids
and nightclasses there
in Conversational Spanish.
I want to learn to say
Barbie in past perfect
so that I can tell my classmates
where I found that old
nappy girl with slanty eyes,
how my mother looked
when standing in front
of the butcher. I'll translate
the smell of sawdust mixed with blood
into Castillian, long passages
which will admit the transfiguration
of copper into bread.