So, cleaning out drawers and file cabinets may be a
very tedious endeavor, butsometimes you find poems from
10, 20, 30 years back... some are good, some are
hopeless, and some worth reworking, like - I think - this one:
the stones
(teotihuacán)
i.
it had rained that day
among the pyramids.
slow climb up the rocks
under the sun as ancient
as midday, as the corn planters.
raspy tongues of stone
serpents against my bare
arms, jaguar eyes catching the
rays, coming to life
coatlicue the mexica
came back across the centuries
laughing at the whiteness of my legs
and warning me, beware of the
barbudos. i in my foolish haste
opened that night to my first
love,
readied for whatever
comes next
ii.
a jagged crater
like the mouth of the
world, a place to feel small in,
fragile perhaps but not too
fragile for the load: pebble,
boulder, the labor
of dragging
the stones.
iii.
but there were other words
too.
and a wordless language.
at dusk, the sharing of
strangeness. a pocket of
warmth.
someone who listened.
we groped for each other across the
distance of darkness, each from
one side, against the beaded
screen of nightfall.
iv.
there is a window in this house
of stone. old shutters that keep
banging open and shut, and then,
open again. a shifting sky. i go out
into the quarry, but the stones are
just
too heavy. there is a bent shape
on the horizon, back turned toward me,
heading down the road toward
the pueblo. a woman in feather
and rags, a silvery braid the thickness
of centuries. she pivots on her
bare feet, shields her eyes, a gaze,
wry laughter, then pivots again. could
this
be it? come back, Coatlicue,
teach me something i haven´t
yet learned.
