July 1936
(thinking of Garcia-Lorca)

The poet dying in Granada
unmoving
touches the silver sphere of evening’s
first-born star,
A pearl half-suspended in rose wine
and tears splashed across a gray felt sky
like blood on dirty sidewalks.

Oh Andalusia
Why do they die?

They die because
That star is a frigid point of steel
Poised above our suffering;
Sacrificial, red-encrusted
Dripping sweat and fear onto
Sawdust agony-
The vivas of the crowd
Are weeping children
and rifles laugh beneath battlements
on the olive-covered hills.

The poet dying in Granada
unmoving
But his eyes stroll off singing
enter faceless shops
and blink at shattered glass–
Glittering baubles in the avenue.

Unmoving
the poet dead in Granada.
For
vultures are the sky
corpses are the earth
And the sunset
A girl’s half-open lips.