Even as the haze clears
above the cars
parked below in their colored rows
I’ve lost my way.
The train a lonely whistle
leaving its lost hour. A red
Texaco star
rusting its green circle
over a five-cent Coke machine;
a broken concrete platform
with bullet-splintered fence
one mile north
of Torrington, Wyoming.
All trains are one train; even the maids
say this. Even the maids will agree
the trash is always different,
yet remnant of a language
no one quite destroys.
Last night at Los Milagros
the American girl from Colombia
got up from her seat,
sang Todo Cambia
the Latin song of changes,
with the band from Oaxaca—
and Hemingway drank again in Madrid;
Lorca fell silent;
my friend from Massachusetts
could no longer eat.
We lose it in a second; every maid
will tell you. Just wait for the arrival
of the owner’s stoned son. Just wait
for the Rio Grande and Southern
lumbering to Antonito,
spewing its cloud of soot
over the burnt-out forests,
over the mines and steel mills
where my family labors still.
The way is of cinders
and throttled Spanish
and the singing yellow bird
who will not leave its cage,
even when the door is open.
xIt’s not hard to fly; the maids know this;
My niece, at forty, losing
her feet, her legs
and soon her hands
to a sentence no one can control.
Always in the photographs, the train
moves farther away;
Again and again, my mother
thrown from a horse,
thrown from a horse
into a barbed-wire fence.
Often towels return from the laundry
smelling of sewage.
Last week in fog at the Albuquerque Zoo
a leopard
took off a small child’s arm.
Just watch, Lupita likes to say
above the scenic city
in her bright orange uniform,
Just watch. It’s the mist—
Tonight it will all come back.