Monday, January 4, 2010

Antonio Cisneros

IN '62 THE HUNGRY MARINE BIRDS
REACHED AS FAR INLAND
AS DOWNTOWN LIMA
.
All night the birds travelled from the coast-here
is spring migration:
the tribes and their combat cars on the lawn
the temples and car roofs.
Nobody saw them reach the walls, nobody at the doors.
-Citizens more deeply asleep than young married couples-
no one stuck a head out a window and those that did
only saw a sea blue sky without a crack or fissure in its back
-except the mailman or the last drunk- and nevertheless
the air was a tower of beaks and tangled hides
as when I slept near the sea during Holy Week.
and the air between my bed and those waters was an old buzzard
from the rocks enjoying himself with a dead skimmer
-and the female gulls snapping at the male gulls and a shaggy
cormorant pounding it self against the walls of the house
.
All night they traveled from the south
I can see my wife with her very clean, neat face while see dreams
of herds of walruses, their flanks pecked and opened by the birds.

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