Intimations of the Next World

9.

In memory of Gonzalo Rojas (1917-2011)

"de sus ruinas siguen apareciendo
recién nacidos intactos...
llorando
en maya, adivinos." ("Nieve de Provo")

Machines sink pincers
in the earth to liberate
more than 100
cadavers in Durango,
while the president escapes

to the Vatican
to have his photo taken
with the new saint-in-
progress, who denied the crimes
of Marcial Maciel

who robbed hundreds of
Mexican boys of their youth,
and pious widows
of their money, and NATO
drops a missile on a house

in Tripoli and
robs Gadhafi of his son
and 3 grandchildren.
The fountains of Mexico's
plazas are filled with the blood

of its young people,
while indigenous women
are walking for water from
the US cardinal points--
bound for Lake Superior,

and the world's workers
march in its major cities
to the main plazas
demanding a living wage
while facing up to unmasked

capitalism,
tear gas and police beatings
in Santiago
and Bogota; only in
Caracas does Chavez join

the marching workers.
On a beach in Canada
Raven pries open
a large clamshell, and sets free
the people of the next world.