*
Beyond dark fields,
where there is no path,
and the last memory
of the grove of eucalyptus
still wafts above the brush,
where the horizon is diminished
by the failing light,
and birds disappear
silently into a starless sky,
here there can be
no bluster
or resistance.
Only mercy
is blessed
to rise again.
*
Does time move?
Who passes whom?
Does the undertow of time
make water climb
and air gather?
If it moves,
surely it must tide.
Or is it just
a consequence
of things, an alibi
for the ever
and once again
transformed world?
*
I have failed.
I did not teach
my child to hope.
The heat is oppressive,
as we hear
the first claps of thunder.
The person I love
never cared for
what I do.
Hail batters
the street,
dissolving almost
as it hits.
In the bustle
of each plummeting,
my friends don’t feel
my embrace.
The fog curls over
a mountain
that is soon erased.
The cold walks
beside me into
the darkest part
of my bones.
Even so, what remains
has filled me
with living.
The shine might
be cheap or fleeting.
It has dazzled
me nonetheless.
After all,
the magnolia tree
is about to flower.
*
Living is particular,
an atmospheric river
that passes over.
Is someone else nigh?
As a moment, carried
by the current, strikes me,
loses itself along some filament,
within submerged, away without,
Am I nearby?
Is anything to be done?
About living?
*
The surge and spill.
This was after
the stem and swell.
The swing stood still
and then it fell.
Diving through surface,
Swallowed in a splash,
a surplus of place,
deeper with floating.
Anchored in now,
soon to be then.
Yet the slowing,
the emphasis,
denies passing.
Laughter arriving
on an eyelash curve.
A glass bell trembles.
Clouds scud over it.
*
When belief
began crossing
the long bridge,
being bound together
was just learning
how to dance
across the days.
But then
years of contempt
drove belief
into hiding,
and his legs
became heavy
from carrying another’s
disappointment.
But belief
was not deceived
by pain,
nor by lasting,
and knew the gift
was fleeting,
and worth more
than liberty,
or the sweet dark.
*
Left alone to take the counsel
of my own soul, I find that
we, my soul and I, often
pass the time endeavoring
each to lull the other away
from the dreary ties of wakefulness.
There is no performative anxiety,
not even to at least achieve
the cozy atmosphere of former,
let’s be blunt, catastrophes.
So much time wasted
on delusions of control.
I was only able to arrive here
and have a cursory look around
once I knew to eschew efficacy,
and by then being was almost done.
We only live while we are useless.
*
Bereft of response,
anxious, clumsy.
A light left on
in an empty room.
A breeze swirls burdens
in the street outside,
befuddled, babbling.
Beyond beseeching,
a little farther off,
we are left to our devices.
Toiling still,
the floor cluttered
with the makings
of vehicles for laughter,
tenderness, and comfort.
Touch has wilted.
With time, everything
that reaches becomes refuse
to be hauled away.
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About the Author
The son of Colombian parents, George Mario Angel Quintero was born in 1964 in San Francisco, California, where he spent his first thirty years. He studied literature at the University of California, and was a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. Under the name George Angel, he has published poetry, fiction, and essays in English. Since 1995, he has lived in Medellin, Colombia, authoring seven books of poetry, and three books of theater plays all in Spanish under the name Mario Angel Quintero. He continues to write and publish in both English and Spanish. He is also a musician, a visual artist, and a theater director.
