Chicago
3 POEMS BY
LUIS ALBERTO ANGULO
(Click
aquí para español)
English translation by Marcel Smith
marbetha@bellsouth.net
BLUEGRASS
(for Thomas Merton and Jorge Luis Borges, IM)
for the music that we hear and that created in us
for the river that we cross and unknowing crosses us
for the solitary throb and the rumble of how much exists
for the shadow and the light that make earth's day
for our singular soul out of a thousand souls it lived in
for the pelt of the pelt that is made flesh
for the father and the son that we were and will be
for the mother's hollow universe
and the forehead's galaxy
for the blue pasture growing on meadows in Kentucky
and the solitary flower of the desert and the mountain
for winds that smell like sea
for the grain that bursts open and the star that dies out
for the desiccated tree where life sprouted again
for pardon and hope and faith and love
Lord, we give you thanks
Lake Shore Drive
I'm riding along the lakeshore
I'm going to Evanston
to my left
the windy city
is spreading out like another lake
over flat Illinois land
I’m leaving behind the museums
the metalworker woman off over there
where sweat and fire
signed a deal in
swarms of men building
buildings nobody can live in
among cathedrals the Sears Tower
money’s number one Tower of Babel
every freebooter’s skull-and-bones
rising above Lake Michigan’s
north shore
to my left Chicago
is spreading out like another lake
over flat Illinois land
LAKE SHORE DRIVE II
the planet's about to blow up
where will we go?
a heat wave jolts the earth
and nobody says a word
we are alone with our
noiseless air conditioning units
drilling holes in the atmosphere or what's left of it
alone with you
reading daily tallies of the deceased
"300 dead in Chicago
Illinois"
city where so many friends live
like fish thrown out of their lake
by the whole planet's trash
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