Homecoming

Guadalajara—New York, 1965

The trees are crystal chandeliers,
and deep in the hollow
a child pits its voice
against the rain.
The city screams its prayers
at the towers in the distance.

Those guitars again.
And the Catholic mantis
clutching at the sky,
a pearl of a city,
cuando se duerme.

Subway blue boys
now ride shotgun
against my freedom and my fears.
Pistols snap like indignant heels,
at midday, and we stand at the docks,
singing a farewell we'd soon forget.

Hymns resound against that dome
entre la fiesta y la agonia.
Worms feed on its concrete,
or we pluck them out of bodies.

But time to forget.
Or remember the easiness
of leaving easy loves,
disappearing
in the arms of secret dreams.

We'll sit at the end
of a banquet board,
and powder our tutored wigs,
flip the pages of gentility
in the rainy season.

English lessons over tea
for the price of memory.

Il mio supplizio
è quando
non mi credo
in armonia.

They say the time
is not much different.
The strange and customary turns
of living may coincide.

In Mariachi Plaza
travelers sing elegies to the beauty
of revolutions and tranquillity.

From the opposite side of the river,
coming in, the skyline seems scrubbed
and pointed ominously into the darkness.

I walk through the market,
kissing colors in a murmur
of self-induced petition.

Two spires,
lying against the night,
are suddenly armed to sail.

The water foams against the bottom,
the way it looked when I left
that dying city

Only a turning to feel the bark
slope off into the night,
with a promise to return.

Un di, s'io non andrò sempre fuggendo
di gente in gente, mi vedrai seduto
su la tua pietra, o fratel mio, gemendo
it fior dei tuoi gentili anni caduto.

From line to line,
from point to point,
is an architect's end of cities.

But I lie down
to a different turbulence
and a plan of transformation.