Poet, you summoned the moon out in verses
and set her high over the hills of Spain
to loom god-like, a blue face without eyes
adrift in the darkness.
But you went the way of the dust many seasons
before the moon of a man's heart rises, before
the boughs of the soul's autumn shudder with leaves
morena-hued and slender.
So this is a fool's lament, because your lines
slid like the moon through clouds between my hands.
I thumbed a borrowed book by lamplight, shifted,
drowsy and heavy-lidded,
from your Spanish to its literal translation,
my wife at my shoulder, a petite Mexican blossom
scented like neatly-folded linen, her gaze alive
with the flashing killifish
of television, my son in the back room cooing
at the slowly-rotating mobile. O what grief
can I feel for you now, amigo de la luna,
who yesterday was a stranger?
and set her high over the hills of Spain
to loom god-like, a blue face without eyes
adrift in the darkness.
But you went the way of the dust many seasons
before the moon of a man's heart rises, before
the boughs of the soul's autumn shudder with leaves
morena-hued and slender.
So this is a fool's lament, because your lines
slid like the moon through clouds between my hands.
I thumbed a borrowed book by lamplight, shifted,
drowsy and heavy-lidded,
from your Spanish to its literal translation,
my wife at my shoulder, a petite Mexican blossom
scented like neatly-folded linen, her gaze alive
with the flashing killifish
of television, my son in the back room cooing
at the slowly-rotating mobile. O what grief
can I feel for you now, amigo de la luna,
who yesterday was a stranger?
