In Mexico City, on the third day of August
flaming horses fell from the sky.
16 Argentine gods fell on scores of people
waiting in line for the bus on their way to work.
In Puerto Escondido we watched
them pull a drowned man from the sea.
His heart stopped but his watch
was still keeping perfect time.
And the children screamed at the horror
of this hulk that once was a man,
their father, now a frothing deadweight
as they tried to raise the dead.
We swam in the blue depths with the fish
and saw the last things a drowning man sees.
Those children will grow up hating the sea.
What it took from them.
The tourista takes me in
with fevered images along with real ones.
Who could have forseen flaming horses
falling from the sky like that?
The dead man was hefted up,
a slippery weight upon the shoulders
of his bumbling rescuers.
I've broken my camera.
This place cries out to be photographed.
I'm a one-eyed bandit
creeping after form and color,
light and shadow,
trying to memorize the light.
In dreams the oracles begin to speak
through me. I try to memorize what was said,
but the words are always gone by morning.
11 or 12 Aug. 1987
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