The Brooklyn Rail

from MUD SONGS

SILVERIVER SPANISH

Es una doña lengua de Castillaitalicamente marittima
in mari murmurebecause the sea does

decí de si las aguaswaterona wateranza
ebbs of accentsrushing toward Buenos Ayres

wharfrom mestizahalf-italic half-latina
Silveriver Spanishlast of the Italian dialects

pushing airs& washing away
the lisp’ painof kings

on a slantlike fools canting
ships attime-docks

if way to the other there beimmoderata cantabile
latingedlabia nostra

OF MIRRORS & ACCENTS

Innamorati di se stessi mirrors tease
falsely. So falls, lo specchio
between language
and the I-speech
splintered
in the speck
of

Lo specch’io

Without distance
the self is one
locked stanza
You better believe it
A single room of its own. Ecco,
Narcissus’s
glance

Wherissimo

Accents are
waves
curling
from the past
in water
everything’s
already begun

Acqua-cum-sonance

Echo, the core myth
of returns
descends
sotto voce
as the cuore of
the matter
throbs, throbbing

Susurro corda, whisper your hearts

PALINDROME SONG

da un amo
all’altro
ai venti
l’ancora canta

from one hook
to another
the anchor
sings wind

windword
downwind
AMO IDIOMA
A M O I D I O M A

warm bisbiglio del porto
the harbor’s mutter
HOOK TONGUE
mammarrammam

ebbè, ebb be
a mudderun

THE FLEAMARKET AT PLAZA DORREGO, SAN TELMO

Derelict domes. Doomed from hawk-heights, sky-blur
All those who hear how they’ve become inaudible
Ashen is the sound save this urn of hands
Relics lure beggars

DUSK OVER ST. IGNATIUS CHURCH, MONSERRAT

In Memoriam Rubén Antonio Ferrari

Every angel is our childhood, between fragmented
wounds in mosaic, the spirit’s contour becomes
estranged from the vernacular of marble lips
Listen to them, in almost-inaudible intervals

The aisle’s luster is a mirror I must traverse
the familiar, lurid fear that his madness creeps
upon me, true, this walk will not save nor absolve
the confession. Blue. Catatonic eyes, my father’s

bird-like shrieks, bark-thick scabs, stark rooms
bereft of self, faces deformed, ticks, antiseptic
tiles. Memory — lilacs lacerated

deep in the verb. Windows, the wire mesh prayers, murmured
visions — worn-out bedsheets in a well-scrubbed ward
where raking urine light floods femurs for limbs

AMBUSH ON 30 APRIL 1994, LA BOCA

for Chelo Rossi

It’s not losing — they most loathe these fans
near the train hangars they retrieve them
their guns, which they load with their own
dread their own defeat

A truck full of red and white chants by
I am Walter Vallejos I am Angel Delgado —
Mothers creep over the unspeakable, gently
rats scurry into the wide din