To Pablo Neruda
Again & again
I have read your books
without ever wishing to know you.

I suck the alphabet of blood.
I chew the iron filings of your words.
I kiss your images like moist mouths
while the black seeds of your syllables
fly, fly, fly
into my lungs.

Untranslated, untranslatable,
you are rooted inside me-
not you-but the you
of your poems:

the man of his word,
the lover who digs into the alien soil
of one North American woman
& plants a baby-
love-child of Whitman
crossed with the Spanish language,
embryo, sapling, half-breed
of my tongue.
I saw you once-
your flesh-
at Columbia.
My alma mater
& you the visiting soul.

Buddha-like
you sat before a Buddha;
& the audience
craned its neck
to take you in.

Freak show-
visiting poet.
You sat clothed
in your thick
imperious flesh.

I wanted to comfort you
& not to stare.
Our words knew each other.
That was enough.

Now you are dead
of fascism & cancer-
your books scattered,
the oil cruet on the floor.
The sea surges through your house
at Isla Negra,
& the jackboots
walk on water.

Poet of cats & grapefruits,
of elephant saints;
poet of broken dishes
& Machu Picchu;
poet of panthers
& pantheresses;
poet of lemons,
poet of lemony light.

The flies swarm
thicker than print on a page,
& poetry blackens
like overripe bananas.
The fascists you hated,
the communists you loved,
obscure the light, the lemons
with their buzzing.

We were together
on the side of light.
We walked together
though we never met.
The eyes are not political,
nor the tastebuds,
& the flesh tastes salty always
like the sea;
& the sea
turns back the flies.