Un mediodía triste
Real de Catorce
A sad midday
A sad midday watching the gray back of the Metro
flattening the sidewalk while a white and voracious sun melts the asphalt.
The 'dolphins' pass by like lost souls
partners of death that get on the world without paying a ticket.
The wind howls thin songs.
People (There's a stench!) ...as if waiting for Christ.
Christ is surely sitting...
in the third row of a burlesque.
There's a small bar with the green corner
outside a barrel organ player dozes
he has thick eyebrows and drools alcohol
covered by the shadow of a bluesy angel.
Little movement, it's early hour
the city doesn't show its gritty face
oozing and red; its hairs to the chest
oh, oh, oh, nor its loose flesh!
The afternoon sits in the old center
lowers its stockings, run-down and dirty
wiggles its lashes like a nocturnal woman
and lets the night fall by opening its legs.
You could die from a disease that uses plaque and electric current
or submerged in a placid opium mist
or mounted on the warm flesh of a Phoenician woman.
You could die any day
the hour doesn't matter much
these are dark times.
Listen carefully to the sirens!
From a burrow emerges the gang
for wearing spurs they are all wanted
like the tide of an angry sea
they cover stretches of foreign streets
smear the walls with red paint
there's an emotion that rubs the air
flowers have not yet grown on the pavement
the city has become a bitter bride.
I have three questions
answer the first:
Who killed the night?
Who opened the door...
deciphered this dream
and hid in the dawn?
