Midwinter

A blind night,

no eyes up there,

no wings.

So to remembering,

voices, faces, touches,

fear and the breaking

of blood-red days,

silences, cold, clean,

music of aeolian harps,

(some of those winds

smelling of violence)

indifferent seas.

Sawdust bars and wicked wine,

coarse perfume, solid stench

of  poverty that wears a grin,

a heritage no advertiser vaunts,

but you and I, compadre, know

the essence of the bonds

that bind all those

who cried: 'no pasaran'.

A cold dawn,

in the stillness sings

the mocking of a bird,

an anvil rings.

Once upon a time

Tonight the clock runs slow,

the pulse of time is weak,

so to turn, to slither back

through sombre years and mist

and fog of shadow lands until

the sun breaks through to light

where spray of ocean celebrates

beneath the cliffs where perch

the gallinazos, condors soar,

flowers peek among grey bones.

There the ocean rolls in dreams

of floating in the blue on winds,

of crystal ice, mountain streams,

of rolling pebbles into sands.

Something in the wind

There's sadness in this wind,

the puny sighs, even the spit of rain

dries as it hits the stones. Its voice

is hoarse, it whispers of long travelling

and now can barely stir the leaves.

Its clouds are shredded by the sun,

could hardly mist a mirror, hold

no memories of how it roared,

beat on the ocean, tore palm trees

from their shading of white sands,

the roofs from heads of houses,

howling with wrath and raging round

its cyclops eye, now closed. Today

its death song's drowned by bees.