Brown Bear Honey Madnesses

                         it is late, México, DF, 
                         waddles in heat, humidity, 
                         unlike glacial realities 
                         awaiting my return ...
                             Hotel del Paseo
                               16 de julio de 1979

And Would That I Could*


and would
     that I could
sing you, Mexico,
songs
that might waft
on mariachi strains,
that I could feel comfort 
in all that you should be. 
your beggars cry out
           for bread 
to feed distended stomachs, 
while Chicanos cry and lament 
over a distorted history
            the severing 
of all that could bind us 
one to the other, 
that horrid loss of meaning, 
sovereignty
            was sepulchred
            in San Jacinto,
            afterward
it was unceremoniously
            disinterred
in New Mexico, Arizona,
California and other places
only
to be dismembered :: we became
shards of clay figurines,
and now

here
at Tlatelolco,
      Plaza de Las Tres (singrifa) Culturas 
I stoke my mind 
playing v.i.p.
      in the entourage of writers 
invited to the Mexico City
      Metropolitan Book Fair
which el presidente of this república 
 officiously inaugurated.
I much preferred cursi mariachi songs 
to discolandia
or other anti-mejicano doings 
in this ancient capital 
of the Nahuatl peoples. . . .

*Also appeared in Selected Poems