Late Antiquity

To the caryatids and atlantes of my late last century Morazán – to Vesta – Minerva – Danaë – Norma – Parma – Alma Xochitl – Mama Lucas called Lucrezia – Leda – your daughter Helen – your daughter Filónoe – Rodas – Héctor – Salve América – Zenón – Elea your sister – Ulises – Ligeia – Augusto – Anticlea – Marco Antonio – and you Uncle I’ll call you Marco Antonio the Younger – I sing your names I place them by the ruins of the house we lost its compasses and comales and diplomas the heavy chest for carrying money into town my great-grandmother’s parasol her hats her hair the hearts my grandfather kept in formaldehyde the shattered skull bones with their inner maps of rivers the photographs the camera obscura the chamomile jars the penicillin the rooms with their mirrors and the flammable accoutrements of morning the coffee and the rice and the soy the cornmeal the hearth with beans and chengas and cheese and fresh-cut spinach the rosemary for the bathwater the clucking hens the latin grammars the greek grammars the thumb-marked glossaries of neo-platonic philosophy the annotated septuagint the canto general the retired rosaries the revolutionary pamphlets the parrot’s perch the old sextant the machetes the leather-bound histories the medical dictionaries the Spanish dictionaries the roque the lars the salarrué that Lucas called Lucrezia would never be able to read in the cruel lexicography of that inabundant time and the cigars she made the wood she carved the ink-red geraniums she planted my mother’s drawings her birds with turquoise tails with russet backs the crocheted whorls and whorls the rugs the toilets the smell of cypress the sapuyulo oil the dinner-table set for twenty the chairs for little children the chairs for growing children the cushioned chair for Lucas called Lucrezia the arm-rest chair for Marco Antonio or for you the younger Marco Antonio the smoother chairs for visitors the radio box the slippers the forks and spoons the shortage of knives the pencils the quills the propagating aloe and geraniums the radical newspapers the coroner’s reports the sandals stained with footprints the dresses the satin blouses the trousers the socks the aprons hovering on the line like stranded floral angels the tub the buckets the home-made soap the tendrils on the windowsill the front door the back door the lava rocks that propped them open the windows the roof the hymns the songs about the weather the Internationale the luna-lunera-cascabelera song the twenty-third psalm the ninety-first el que habita el abrigo del altísimo psalm the ave maria the pillars of hercules the useless atlas of outdated worlds your pedestals heavy with baskets with camote with mango with ingots with cinnamon with doves how should we excavate how should we arrange the pieces of your archaeology of your hands of the sunlight in your rooms of your notebooks of your art maybe Norma standing Parma standing Danaë holding up the arms of Alma Xochitl all of you holding Vesta who was broken Zenón also broken Elea and Leda gone and also Helen who fled the war and Marco Antonio who built the house and Lucas called Lucrezia who tended the house and you who held the arches held the concrete held the windows held the doors the columns the floors the cypress the turquoise bird all of it gone now all of it burning all of it endlessly