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VERACRUZ
CODEX
Two
days before the beginning of Carnival
she
and I, travelers on a voyage of rediscovery,
arrived
in Veracruz naked from the neck up.
Having
lived three centuries, maybe more,
in
worlds known better to Creation,
having
sat at the foot of glaciers and volcanoes
listening
to the torrents of magma and black water,
we
came as babies come,
weaned
in the lap of Jehovah
during
a tempest from which we never could return.
All
day we stood in a rapture of memory
watching
the instant tropic revolution,
quickly
sprouting fins and gills
for
another life in a semi-aquatic realm.
That
night we shed our scales and sang,
we
gave away our promised revelations,
all
our combs and socks and pictures of the dead,
we
cut loose our anchors and our prayers
and
tossed them in the street, where they remained
unnoticed
by the tired and sated cathedral.
Divested
of all upbringing, habits and books,
the
music alone churned in our hearts, and said
that
we had entered the gates of another kingdom
ruled
by the jaguar, the myth of man and woman
"becoming
reality in the long run," The blood
became
sap and coconut milk, a fountain
circled
by a silver disc, our laugh,
the
crazed and dreamy symbol of lost and found,
taken
from the earth, whacked on the ass,
watered,
hammered into shape, and transplanted.
One
day after the Carnival at Veracruz
we
discovered the sea of luminous creatures
where
all true lovers and dreamers reside,
tending
to the early morning light upon the palms,
gently
cultivating the body's exotic clockwork,
listening
for the bells of long-sunk holy places,
bowing
to the all-effacing wind, the storm
that
curls upon itself and makes a nest of drama,
seeking
our applause our presence
our
proper wonder,
asking
if we have bathed
in
the ocean of plenitude.
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