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.