The story is always the same story,
With every step retraced;
They tell the story in Buenos Aires

to Antonio M. Cubero

The flags sang their colors
            and the wind is a bamboo shoot between the hands
The world grows like a bright tree
                                                Tipsy as a propeller

I might have been a martyr. Instead I was
A scourge of martyrs, trying souls in fire.
To save my own soul, I tried tears and prayer,

There is so much lonliness in that gold.
The moon of every night is not the moon
That the first Adam saw.

I have forgotten my name. I am not Borges
(Borges died at La Verde, under fire)
Nor am I Acevedo, dreaming of battle,

The willow is bare and the sky is full of willow.
Weeping into gutters, the sound of tires in rain
flows down and rises up to open windows

He waited for her the last time
in the Cafe Eichberger, at their table:
walls the color of chocolate, tiles worn

Concrete forest, puddled houses; clouds
sweep across the sky—a thunderhead
settles in. Think how anger seethes