Donde esta Padre Deofilo y Guillermo?
I keep asking the Indian housekeeper,
who keeps pointing to the hills
and repeating, Las montanas, Senor,
like she doesn't have the slightest idea
what I'm talking about, but she knows
what’s going on and so do I, the Jesuits
have decided to show me
who's boss in Pintada,
so here I am, kicking stones
from one fly-papered end of town
to the other, sure that whatever gods
are left in heaven are leaning over
the edge of it, laughing, Ah, there he is,
our Hero, still searching for his Magdalena,
and then I’m stumbling past
a tattered line of dirt-floor shacks
trailing off into the jungle,
no windows, no doors,
only a dark shape
where the door should be,
and I look up, see a woman
in a dark slip staring out at me
like she’s slowly undressing herself
and my chest tightens and then I'm
past the door, feeling frightened
and then foolish, telling myself
(Con’t.)
I'd have to be crazy, that if I
turned back, she'd be putting curlers
in her hair, or pulling some bare-assed kid
up on her lap, but a part of me
doesn't care, a part of me is already
standing in her doorway, watching her rise up
to greet me the way water rises, her dark,
muscular stomach pressing against me until
there is nothing between us but her
sharp, sudden cries and then I’m
sliding down her body in a tangle
of shadows, we are falling together for hours
or days or years or however long it takes
for the ravenous flame vines to open
and die and for there to be
a strangeness all around us, like autumn,
whispering we are no longer one,
but we will refuse to believe it
until an angel lays himself
between us like a fiery sword
and then, after we have told each other
the stories we have told no one, not even
ourselves, you will leave by one door and I
by the other, and one by one, the roads
and rivers that brought us here
will shrivel and die and nothing
will be left of us but these walls
and the harsh, dolorous song
we will sing all our lives.