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The Campesino's Lamnet It is Ash Wednesday, and Christ iswaiting to die. I have left my fields dark and moist from last night's rain, to take the sacrament. My face is streaked with ashes. Come back, Mujer. Without you, I am an empty place where spiders crawl and nothing takes root. Today, taking the Host, I remembered your hands—incense and earth, fingertips like white grapes I would take into my mouth one byone. When I enter the house, it resists me like an angry woman. Our room, your things, the bed—a penance I offer up for Lent. Waking with you, I would fill myself with the morning, in sweet mango breaths. Watching you sleep, I willed my dreams into you. But clouds cannot be harvested, nor children wished into life. In the wind that may travel as far as you have gone, I send this message: Out here, in a place you will not forget, a simple man has been moved to curse the risingsun and to question God's unfinishedwork. 82 ...

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