Anxiety in Mosaic

POBRE MADRE

36 With the smear of propagandist grease; this name Spotted here and there with the rusty marks Of libellous stains POBRE MADRE* Pobre madre, mi pobre madre Intrepid tigress moves Toward death from which The world runs away helter-skelter Still, no perturbations rock The emotions of your being You whom indigence has raped and battered These several tenebrous decades gone by Pobre madre, mi pobre madre Lone, dry-eyed amazon, tranquil Amid these many crying faces I see Your pretty face Is one on which smiles Usurp the place of tears Even as spiky years Flagellate to the soul Pobre madre, mi pobre madre Stillness… Unmoved In this very vortex of transcience Elephantine anvil Standing in the whirlwind 37 May heaven succour you! Lying marooned in this wilderness of flinty times For when slavery begets immortality, O pobre madre! Who can plot with success, your demise? You who sweated centuries in the sun, Remaining poor Just to give others their bulging purses Of today * Spanish for poor mother * Poor mother, my poor mother LOVE POEM Sitting on a Saharan dune My love’s heart breaks of dearth In my wildest dream, wilder Than elephant grass I have borrowed the sweet voice Of many-a-songbird To sing her a love song of all that, in vanity’s hands – Does lie In my fervent wish, dreamier Than wishful thinking I have borrowed the humming voice Of many-a-distant waterfall To mend – with a ballad on illusion – My love’s broken heart of indigence Parch-mouthed, my darling awaits me Sitting on the Namib’s doorstep And in my profoundest longings, more profound ...