Poetry | September 01, 2009

Last night, in the smoke, the moon had a seizure,

wobbling so you couldn’t understand it. Flowers

on the hillsides are still confused, flying off

in the remaining wind. Peasants are following

a funeral procession, heading for the horizon

lost in blue lightning. The dead man’s feet

point backward to the maize fields where he was born.

Ignazio whispers, “He said ‘Don’t leave me to die

on the side of the road. Don’t leave me at night with

my eyes covered between two policemen. Take me home.'”

A dog gnaws a bone in the dirt. No sign of policía.

Later, in the café he tells me he.d once read in an old book

about a fountain in the rocks where the water pours out

and becomes green, and about a turquoise spring

that sings between pebbles and the bell-bird responds.

The song of the water, he said, sounds like tambourines.

“Where is this place?” “It’s called Tonacatlalpan.

Only for princes, owners of the world, a world only

for princes, nothing for the vassals, the common folk,

those who grieve, those who suffer torment and misfortune

on earth.” The procession passes, and the air is suddenly

clear as glass. Moctezuma, I’ve heard, had many mirrors

in his palaces, so he was everywhere and nowhere,

exaggerated, diminished, getting lost in them,

in himself, and the mirrors broke.