Heroico

Boy,
When you fight the Man,
In passion,
You will die.

But
When you make love to the Woman,
In patience,
He will die,

Then
Your son, and hers,
Will live to rule the world
In his stead.

. . .

But teach him to be a father
Who does not require killing.

King of the Jungle

There was that time the silver-backed gorilla threw a softball-sized dirt clod at me

As I observed him at the St. Louis zoo.

The dustball disintegrated into a million grains of sand 

When it his the wall of the enclosure

Next to where I stood.

Or the time the American Bison marched toward us down the centerline of the highway,

As we sat dumfoundedly in our friend's new Dodge 

That we had borrowed for our trip out West

To Yellowstone.

His red eye did not regard us when he passed the driver's window.

Once, my friend and I were hunting squirrels in the wood

Behind my grandfather's cornfields

When a buck came crashing through the underbrush,

Unaware of us.

He stopped ten feet in front of us, then snorted a loud pffsssshhhh.

Another time I sat upon the leafy detritus with my back against an Ash tree.

Two coyotes walked behind me,

Just inches away,

Pretending not to see me,

Or not pretending, perhaps.

At the age of ten I was riding my bike though the neighborhood

When a frenzied bluejay took notice of me.

He cackled and cawed

As he dived and swooped in a flurry of blue and white and black,

Pecking thumbtacks into the top of my head.

I sat in the tire swing for twenty minutes that day,

Before that crazy Dalmatian lost his mind

And began ripping into the flesh on the side of my stomach.

I beat his head:

His jaws did not slake.

But it is this tiny rod that will have its way with me

And finish me off, in the end.

Devouring me from the inside,

Turning my body against itself

In ague suicidal. 

I Am

I am
and dangerous to be.

I think
beyond riddles and credos.

I doubt
a man has lost his gods.

I believe
men have been crucified for as much.

I am
as much as you are at my own peril.

Flur

My translation of "La Rosa de Harina" by León Felipe,
Por Ernesto:

But man is a child, laborious and stupid,
Who has made of the game a sweaty workday.

He has converted the stick of the drum
Into a hoe,
And instead of tapping on the terrain a hymn of joy
Has been carving her.

If we only knew how to journey beneath the applause of the stars
And to make a poetic symbol of each workday!

I want to say that nobody knows how to plow to the rhythm of the sun,
And that nobody has cut even a single blade of wheat
With love and with grace.

This bread maker, for example: Why is it that this baker
Does not give a rose of white bread to this hungry beggar,
And place it in his lapel?