In Ronda the cliffs are steep
And the waters mild so far as I recall;
Her sun sets on a landscape of olives and dust,
She swallows time in great gulps of oil and sky—
Nothing but a flock of pre-dawn breeze,
And florid sky, and lake
Taut with water, like a sail:
A painting in motion, unfinished.
I had thought I lacked for time
And spent my days frantic,
As though life were a web
And death a looming spider, his
Approach inexorable, his mouth
A relentless South Texas wind poses impossible questions,
Flaps the smirking flags until they are upturned,
Mists the mown grass with evil’s sputum,
Ripples the lone unarmed security guard’s shirt
As he waves concentration camp employees
I am become the poet of resistance.
I write like a comet, a solar flare,
A sawed-off shotgun,
And where my words no longer suffice
Let them mingle with my blood,
What if you can’t do well do good?
What if my electric car
And diligent recycling
Mean less than nothing to
The slave-wage worker
They’ve separated 2,000 children.
No, they’ve discarded them
Like cans of Coca-Cola,
2,000 children who reached our shore
Like sea foam, salty, crying salt,
The squirrels were dancing in the trees
On a cataract of leaves
Occluding the moon,
And fields of tobacco slept
Like unlit dreams.
A cold river divides us:
Cold currents, cold fish, cold limbs,
A carnival of shattered ice
They traverse, barefoot,
With bleeding feet, frostbitten blood,
To risk a safari of lethal ice.
If I baptized ghosts
And knew that they were ghosts;
If I consorted with hallucinations
And accepted the pain of false association;
If I planted a Willow