*
When I feel like crying
I remember all the marbles I lost
through the reckless pride
of the gambler.
I cry because those marbles were
like little planets
asleep in the universe of my pocket.
I cry because they must be alone now
in some trashcan, in the house of a grandmother
who isn’t my own.
(My grandmother lives in a graveyard—“The Hill”
—in row 41, beside a man named José.)
I cry because marbles are like the eyes of God,
but real.
*
*
I think about the hurricane’s smile,
about its innocence and the millions
of people with a different sky
and with the ruins of a fabricated kingdom
and with their knees on the ground,
with a small hurricane in their eyes
that doesn’t laugh because it doesn’t destroy.
I think about the smile of the stone
that just shattered the window,
about the other hand’s guilt
which is surely as full of mud
as the heart:
the stone is more alive.
I think about the hurricane’s smile,
about a boy destroying a city of lies,
about useless umbrellas that turn into birds
but never make it south.
Like crystal, we will shatter
because of a stone made of liquor,
because of light from a worn out jukebox
and the worn out voice of alligator boots
and ostriches’ tears, black hats
and its black heart. Mine.
I watch the hurricane on TV in a bar.
My mother died in New Orleans.
They don’t have jazz on the jukebox,
New York and Chicago are crying too.
I must be very lucky.
*
*
I’ll mourn the dead in a white room
with the door shut and windows open.
I’ll mourn on my rooftop
while mechanically repairing the air conditioner.
I’ll mourn the dead during office hours,
at lunchtime and while brushing my teeth.
I’ll mourn all my dead
while I watch TV,
while I do laundry,
while death approaches me.
And I have to mourn the dead
exactly as one suffers,
cries and suffers, this everyday routine of death.
Crying was never good for anything.