in Chile’s mountains, secret forest where
the long dirt road’s capricious roots and rocks
jut up to defy any squealing tires bringing
in the jeeps of the anti-poets wearing pistols
and waving machine guns. Every fascist knows
writers are like mice able to disappear down
the invisible labyrinths of the silence beneath
tropes, why it is such fun to torture them in cellars
when those fucking freedom lovers get caught
and pain twists their songs to squeaks. But
on this night only you have found the way
to the border arrogant enough to split Argentina
from Chile, staggering through black woods
yet seeing clearly as if it were high noon,
monkey puzzle trees asymmetries against
a sky of so many stars they touch light to light.
Your feet are stopped by a moss-covered log
shaped like a whale, you kneel to feel
the soft spongy green which shocks you into
realizing this is another poet, this is el maestro
Pablo Neruda garbed in an emerald coat,
beached across Pachamama where amigos
brought him to escape across the Andes to another
country, fleeing los Carabineros planning to blow
out his brain and its bravery of visions. You lay
your own body near Pablo’s, close as possible,
curving frail arm around him in an embrace
not easy to accomplish when he is of the vastness
of seas and skies, when you are growing older
and smaller. Is he dead? Is he sleeping?
You pray to preserve him, starlight to starlight
igniting a trembling fire.
