Buenos Aires Poem

The humid sun stands back and looks on behind the hopeful breeze of autumn.
The old glory of Buenos Aires curls up to sleep like the dogs on the street;
Fading like the old people in cafes;
Waiting like a rainbow under the poverty.

The flow of life drones on through the habitual dust.
Hear the accustomed cry of the street vendor and the train vendor and the trained child vendor and the ill-fated families who watch TV
Two blocks behind the tourist shops with their ponchos and their tango shows
And the rusty smell of the asados
Hear the cry of truth that has stumbled on the streets where no one goes.
Truth? I think I saw her once, old and worn, trying to rest in a doorway
While I waited for a bus home.
I paid her attention with a peso and she gave me a mate stained smile
And a few words about providence…

White Page

In a room papered with poetry

On a sofa warm and leathery

Before a hearth stacked with melancholy

Over a page of new white stationary

Is scrawled a story she knows is stupidity

There once was a girl with a head full of curls

and her feet firmly planted one in each of two worlds

As she curled up in bed the worlds wound round her head

she dreamt of a room papered with poetry

of a sofa warm and leathery

and on the hearth she stacked her melancholy

Watching her life burn gently away

Over a page of new white stationary

She wrote another