Alive is Everything

From all available ghosts I chose you,
not because your voice came back to
peter some ten years after, nor to see
advice. With a musk I heard words train
faithful to deeds (logic’s flower, petals as
form) and like daughters, twin their sums,
or loop as any luminous orbs. What you said
rings prestissimo. Too harsh the shiny brass,

each gong, raw bronze, answered voicings
of a drumhead’s well: From the tall Masai,
Masaccio, Kandinsky and the blue-black Kush,
the Maya, Sanskrit, Euclid, leaf-seed alchemy
or Chimu signs, you stenciled sets of ciphers,
painted glyphs and inset knots along a grid.
Hypatia and Patrice Lumumba stopped, Ché’s
watch, a fickle arsonist, Bruno’s noose, the

nervous hangman – A tree is known by its fruit.
You said in Barquisimeto suffer the blind, on
the Cali coast, wealth began with slaves.
No words for toothy dealers, you stepped
out toward the yoga mat, Ramón Lull’s,
The Tree of Love, peasant sandals, a
bouquet of brushes, unrolled canvas,
a flute, and avowed the old world.

Originally printed in Mantis 1 (2000)