Canticle of the New Order
At first I wandered the streets
of Manhattan
till my feet gave out and my mind
sprang loose
by Grant’s tomb
I looked across the river
to New Jersey and heard the call
of Catholic bells
(clang and taint of faith)
ate mangoes
in East Harlem a pizza slice
on 14th Street
(oh universal wedge of taste)
and found the kindling
of a fire about to burst
from the bush of love’s perdition
to the very heart of the new order.
*
Under the moon the fields
are the color of my mother’s
breast when she
was a young woman in love
her touch like the flow
of water over stone
the river turning
silver into foam
the bank brown slate
sky mottled
into yellow husk
across the road the pines
sway like the earth’s bones.
This was my last
experiment in solitude
by the river in the woods
what I did
what I failed to do
volví a La Habana
la vi como respiración
(I returned to the city of birth)
like breath
a curl in lost time
bucle del tiempo perdido
paulatinamente pablo
repentinamente cuerdo
slowly pablo suddenly sane.
*
The river is long soup
unchartable as your voice
high sometimes
fast and churning
or dense and slow your foot
making its way up my thigh
el río negro como la brea
tar river of childhood
how can full be empty
and empty full
no hay nada más cierto
que la incertidumbre
nothing is more certain
than uncertainty
te vi delgada y límpida
ángel callejera
I saw you thin I saw you
clean I fell in love
llevo esa pena
en mis venas
decked out pushed out
street angel left for dead
I curried favor not with kings
but with the kinks and flings
of sameness and dissent
I went at night
to the streets of bored hordes
the painted women
sniffing powder with smeared men
jittery boys who looked
but didn’t make it home
before dawn llegué
al amanecer with torn shirt
stained pants and twenty
cents in my pocket
if you spend
don’t spend halfway
if you make mistakes
let them come in waves
in cookie trays champagne
glasses music boxes
unmade beds
over the water
the mist gathers slowly
the sun breaks like an egg
and spills through the woods
the black telephone of longing rings
no one answers
the lamb is brought to the sacrifice
la fiesta termina en el mar
the festival ends in the sea.