Workmen Repairing The Flagpole
At The Municipal Hall
Rio de Janeiro, 1978
(during the military dictatorship)
1.
They stand elevated on its base,
three black men - one uniformed in green,
one in red & yellow, one in white & blue,
shining in sunlight, bright like figures
carved on a German public clock.
The flag pole wavers in their arms.
2.
Once this would have been heroic.
Once whole monarchies, regimes,
trembled to the muscles of workers
raising flags.
This morning,
people watch with mild curiosity.
3.
In 1785, the painter David
exhibited the Oath of the Horatii:
three brothers strong and proud.
Its political implications were
immediately apparent. He wrote
Jean Antoine Gros, "You love art
too well to concern yourself
with frivolous subjects."
Trios on a Rose Trombone
1.
Trios on a rose trombone.
In the hot summer of the solo
Weaves the weeping of a saxophone.
The music of a pale stone
In clear water, and the grieving
Of a willow. The slow tone
Of a willow weeping, alone
And far away. Far away and all
Alone, weeping where the wind has blown.
2.
White wind and silver ice. A cornet
Cries into the quiet of a snow filled field.
A jay cries sharply – once, twice.
A fox stalks in a forest of silver trees.
He breaks from the trees and streaks
To an insignificant kill. Finished,
He stands on blood-streaked snow,
His ears pricked to the wind’s monotone,
Far away and all alone.
3.
A silver circus on the plain.
A moonlit night. A silver tent, high
Above an insignificant crowd. The sad refrain
Of an oncoming locomotive. The night sky
Thunders with its smoke; wheels strain
Shrieking along dark rails.
The sad whistle of a rose trombone.
While all around the moonlit landscape pales
In mnemonic mournings of the saxophone.
The Beggar Woman
(The Mosaic Sidewalks of Rio)
Her legs broken and deformed,
useless bones no bigger than a child's,
she crawls the street, her hands
pushing in front of her a small bag
and a tin pan half filled with cheap coins.
All who walk around her are giants.
Her brown, vulnerable eyes
look up from the bright, patterned sidewalk,
caught like a crippled dog
in its design.
1945
It happened before
we were born.
Yet the big guns
over the Pacific
echoed in our lives,
fainter each year,
and through
the dark tunnel of time
we heard
machine gun bullets
spatter
on a German road.
Here was the crucible
of our generation:
My older sister
remembers
grownups dancing around
the radio
celebrating peace.
