Moon at Half Past Noon

II

I saw Silvio sing
‘Te doy una canción’
Through a giant rubble
of homes, deserted

It was dificult to say
If he sang of the moon or the sun
The sandstorm rose high
The snowstorm froze the innards

A little stream of life
Trickled and dripped
Twenty feet under the ground
Where the fist of the beast
Thumped, and under his feet
Crushed everything that grew above

‘And from the shadows you come out’
The abrupt bass of silence
after the mortar exploded
The melody simmered
Two bodies, one shell
A cocoon, a coffin
A private oasis of pain
Writhed and moaned
in an absurd beat and rhythm

The pompous lovemaking
of the dead
A plea for a shred
for privacy and respect
Without roses or a dirge
They snuggle, like worms of a wet earth

From a distance, it would so appear
A mortal combat of eternal hurt humiliation
But where, everything dies
Love festers, like a wound

Dearly beloved, brtothed to despairs
Silvio risks his life
for he knows, no one sees you or cares

Whose heaven is this?
Whose hell we invent?
Or is it, a choiceless surrender
of the meek, a stranger
Whose home and hearth
We unstitch and plunder

Or is it, the future
That we aim to mute
When children will be born
Without the lips
that speak and quiver
Only with noses to rub
Ears for sermons delivered
And, eyes that burn in anger
to quench this fire, no tears