Saturday, September 30, 2006

Last Night I had the Strangest Dream

Beléndez At the Dodge: gOld Soul

A young
Neruda,
this poet
in a chair that rolls like

a mechanical horse,
a jungle path called exile,

music,

constant accompaniment,
the parrot and the cat,
monkey and the Andean asp,
all that rises in the caw-and-hiss of a
sleeping night caught in an updraft of
dream, tropic stall of northerly wind
somewhere over Central America now,
a small place near the sea, conch and coral, salt;

dream fills the spaces between, sprouts leaves
that perfume the air with spells, dream-worlds
faintly tipped in Mazatlan gold, in blood,
like claws taken in the hunt and adorned
to be worn, still warm, hacked mitts
slightly smaller than the poet who was,
he claims, no bigger than a mango in his
birth, no smaller than his own early shadow
in this long, late light.