Mountain

A natural, or confounded, mysticism
Could it also be an artificial, machine-made vision?
Chemicals, organic as rain pulled down from clouds
By the mountain--this edge of rainbow unpoeticized

Pedestrian prose for these (my cities)
Walking down avenue, away from glass
Toward temporary machine reproductions
A sense of "being" in Caracas now
With late modernist high rises, tropical draped trees
A line from the parallels of our brown skin
No _______ but I will try to write "thee"

Likewise, this is Caracas without the paranoia
Even sadder, then, for this kind deceit / draft

*

Unread as I still am, I'm looking for Roberto Bolaño's
Los detectives salvajes, which Simón mentioned the
other night: "Lo tienes que leer."

I'm looking for "the cities," as this Honolulu / an archive
Minutes for drafts / 33 years ago today, Boston-born
Whose gifts acquire artificiality's grace / for quiet

All with Conchita's words (Anna in the Tropics):
"And you are the reader of the love stories, and anybody
who dedicates his life to reading books believes in rescuing
things from oblivion."

Connected in translation's air with Doña Ines contra el olvido
Ana Teresa Torres, whose novel I would choose if I were a lector
The alabaster statue of Jose Marti at the park in Ybor City
filmed in super 8mm walking w/ C. and U. three years ago
a bird perches on his uplifted hands ("this hand" / "poet hands")
His readings for the workers would have been a form of mysticism