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VISITING
THE VERY OLD
Best
when visiting the very old
not to use your senses
but the
same layers of the mind
reserved for chess,
mathematics,
molecular physics
Because the very
old
become more abstract each day
Their once familiar
shapes giving way
to lines and angles
that verge upon
caricature
even as they fade, recede.
Recollecting
their former selves
will only make matters
worse,
the contrast futile
as conjuring a Rembrandt or
Renoir
when viewing an art therapy show--
stick-figures with
spiked hair
boats composed of jagged black threads.
At
best you can close your eyes
conjugate in your head all the
verbs
you've learned by heart.
If that doesn't work,
imagine yourself
on a plane not long after take-off
at
that point when the blue-green runway lights
and lamps from
windows of familiar buildings
seem more distant than the
stars.
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SATURN'S
RINGS
the round walls of old
cities
bracelets of flamenco dancers
cambium layers
fingerprint-whorls
no metaphor can elucidate
why so many
rings within rings
ice, rocks, and dust
some braided,
some a pale red
knotted thin elliptical
but this
much I know
from my earthly, my only
perspective:
the
saturnine need
such labyrinths of light
to see the
contours of their darkness
especially its edges and rims
lest
they forget that as children of winter
they have a flair
for the slanted
shapes of light, door-cracks, thin
stripes
the facets of diamonds
to be plucked
from the snow
if they dare break
the circumference of
sadness
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HYDRANGEAS
IN WINTER
Those blue and magenta
hydrangeas:
if I did not know everything
is
upside-down here, a dome's mirror image,
those hydrangeas
blooming in a Santiago alley,
late January, would arouse my
already keen
sense of doubt--
A
mere fluke: akin to meeting a golden unicorn, seeing
a
cloud's inner lining; waking up fluent in Spanish--
instead of inspiring my gratitude for doubleness,
the two-fold
nature of every plot, earth, moon,
shadow, mirror, idea,
the split halves of a rock.
--Santiago, Chile
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