Calle del Desengaño, Antigua, Guatemala
cuando la tarde languidece / renacen las sombras …
1.
I smoked Payasos, ten cents a pack,
in their red jacket, deadly
as their big clown face.
I wore a silver cross around my neck,
against my polyester suntan,
and we walked hand in hand
along Desengaño Street, two
delinquents of the 1970s.
Orchards stood to one side, shattered
churches to the other
from earthquake after earthquake
after earthquake, after mud
flood, after lava flood — all
that woe: desengaño translates
as disappointment, even heartbreak,
but no. It is disillusion:
as in freedom from illusion.
Not disenchantment.
Not the dashing of dreams
but the rescue from guile, from engaño:
To have lived deluded, then
to be disenthralled, to be
jarred awake. And how in this
extravagant entropy had we
accreted there, walking,
embracing, dos ingenuos,
dos enamorados, two swaying pods
of inflamed dust? We set out
from Calle de los Herreros, past
the market, out of town toward
the Estadio Pensativo … who
would call a stadium thoughtful?
But it stands hard by the Rio
Pensativo, the pensive river,
the puzzled river, with its many
qualms, stirring like leaves.
A breeze lifts out of the pines
and gums, festooned with moss
and voices, finds its way down
the colonnade. Above it and us,
the volcano floats on a cloud,
another wisp at its cone — weightless
as a blow-ball but webbed
with dirt paths, stone paths,
leafy paths, grackles and wrens
darting through the thickets.
Every day we set out on this walk,
which should never have ended.
*
The grevillea trees spill
in narcotic bunches over the walls,
clusters of evening where
we breathe deep, our warmest
nights folded in them
until we forget — not
each other but the names, dates,
the cobbled music
underfoot, even that spring
and wild part of who
we were or who
we thought we were.
2.
Someone is burning chaff,
someone is burning garbage, someone
is singing to a radio ranchera.
Animals are crying in a far corral
as they do before an earthquake.
The afternoon dims in the dirt yard,
within the big wood gates
where I come every day for you,
for lunch, coffee, and walks,
chaperoned, my arm round
your waist, then for the drive
into town to shop at the market,
then, evening, to circle the plaza like fish
in a grotto, only to breathe,
walk, smoke. It’s impossible to forget
your hand on the slight shoulder
of your grandmother, tiny and shy
at our wedding, embracing
your waist. She floats up now
through the dark and waxy leaves
of the finca, through the crumbling
walls, the shadows
of the coffee trees, the beneficio
burning white in the sun,
where the beans were dried and bagged.
Once in election time your father
handed me a loaded nickel
pistol and told me to be careful.
After coffee, I sleep like a child.
How could I leave that? Am I
and leaving that the same? Not
for many years, in spring, did I go back.
3.
Most of what we see is memory.
The moon hangs
inked-in above the sierra,
backed into silence. Night gathers
in the foothills
where the paths web — dirt paths,
dust paths, paths of stone, paths
papered with coffee
leaves, then at the foot
of the slope: your house
among the pines
and bandits of the volcano.
The safest memory
is one forgotten,
lying like a locket
in the soft dust, unharmed
by the passage
from hand to hand, cell to cell,
so often it can’t be
what it was:
page after page
of your absence, clouds
over the finca, the memory
driven down,
gnarled like a root —
hacked out
of eucalyptus hills.
4.
Dark leaves, white blossoms.
We drive down from Santa María
de Jesus, crossing over
the milpas, through the fog
of San Pedro de las
Huertas, parched and creviced
street imperceptibly becoming
San Miguel Escobar, still
some sparse woods around the farm.
Four decades vanish in foam.
The driver says,
“This is Finca El Volcán, home
of the Cobián family.”
“They were my in-laws,” I say.
He looks back to see
if I’m joking. Then, “Do you want
to go back?” he says, very serious.
I say, “No. I can’t.”
/ / /
Note: “cuando la tarde languidece / renacen las sombras” is the first line of a well-known Latin American song called “Moliendo Café” (“Grinding Coffee”). The line translates as, “When the afternoon wanes, the shadows are reborn.”