"When history sleeps it speaks in dreams;

on the forehead of the sleeping people the

poem is a constellation of blood.

When history wakes image becomes act,

the poem happens; poetry moves into action."



Octavio Paz





CANTO DEL RIO BRAVO



por Rafael Renteria





1 The Refuge



Cars pass.

Two men leap from their bunks.

They press their faces to the dark glass.



Outside the window they are coming,

they crawl through ditches,

past sensors buried in the dirt,

rip their skin beneath barbed wire,

move beneath the world

crouched in drainpipes ,

in the trunks of cars,

on the roofs of trains,

make their passage

through a curtain of snakes.



In the morning

the men open the door,

hunt the street with their eyes,

press their backs to the wall,

peer around the corner.



They cannot see the green vans

slithering in the streets.



There is nothing.



She has not come.





2 The Will of the Priests





The priests of Coyloxaoqui

gathered all her bones

and the soft film of light

from the skulls of those

whose tongues spoke dreams,

who hunted the pale invader in sleep.



They formed a shield in the darkness

from the coppery fire of their will for us.



One still waits.



Her name cannot be said.

It was formed in silence

to enter those who find her.



No asking opens this.

There was no name

for the temple of their gathering.



She remembers the forgotten things.

Obsidian orbs that blazed and fell to ash.

The slinking of the feathered one

whose serpent mouth

set fire to the long grass,

whose fangs emptied

the village of children.



She is made of them

and of the ancient sorceress,

the jaguar that dwells in our hands

that dissolve and pour themselves

like dust into the earth.



She makes quiet atonement

for the fallen moon,

the severed corpse.



She lays a wreath of green feathers

to curse the smoking mirror,

the god of heart-eaters whose open gate

brought the long horror to this shore.





3 The Black Bridge



After they've shopped

the women return to Juarez,

crossing the bridge

with their small packages.



The Customs stop an old car

waiting to cross the line

into the North.



Dogs strain at their leashes,

their claws clicking against the fenders.

They sniff the trunk.



The women freeze.



They cross themselves

in the ancient gesture

of the conquered.



A hundred yards away,

in open daylight,

a young boy runs at top speed

scales a fence twenty feet high

drops to the other side

he doesn't stop

he springs across

the black railroad bridge

oblivious to us.





4 The Dog



They have split in two

the river flowing from our mouths.

They have removed his fathers' tongue.



His mother

has died of fright.



He leaps the black cross

of their silence



and runs to the black mouth

of the North

into its teeth of giant boulders



its bestial throat



the great black dog of night

who is waiting on the other side.





5 La Peseta





There is no grass

on the mountains.



Near the river

in the treeless shantytowns

of Juarez there is no running water.



On Avenida Lerdo

a man sells cheap cigarettes.

A woman with five children

and a shopping cart

begs a quarter.



Four year olds sell

tiny square packets of gum

to the absurd gods of the north;

they are light skinned,

so rich, so tall?

their heads float above their shoulders?

the Earth itself is different here

but they cannot feel it beneath

their feet.



From this side

downtown El Paso

is a skyline of banks,

a giant gleaming fist

in the dust.





6 El Sueño





There is no grass on the mountains.



No heart beats in the unceasing wind.



At darkfall a jade ghost rises

with the desert stars

and with Venus,

who is unknown to him.



He is the thought of War

that moves like fog

along the banks of the Rio Bravo.



He is a dream of stone

resting in the brown palm

of a sleeping girl.



He drifts downward

over the dry brown slopes,

hovers above the sand

then floats through the streets

bumping the tourists.



Their heads float in slow circles.



They look backwards.

over their shoulders,

sighing.



They see nothing

not the jade ghost

nor the jaws of the eagle;

not the feathers

as they fall each night

to rest in the black hair

of a sleeping child.



They fall silently on the cobbled streets,

near the door of a small shop.

There, in a basket of trinkets

the key of heaven turns.

The girl turns in her blanket.

A jade eye opens

and turns its gaze

through the waters of the river.



On the other side

the tallest buildings turn to sand,

to crumbling, the walls

slide down pouring

heavy sackfuls of dust

into the lungs of the men

and their shining black shoes.



In Juarez

a woman rises from her bed.



In a secret room

she grinds corn

and waits

for the sun to come.





7 The Captain



Yolanda said her brother is grown now,

not as she remembers him, with his

horses and long eyes.

He's a captain now

in the Border Patrol.



He makes a lot of money now?

never turns in all the drugs.

No one does.



He lives in a quarter million

dollar house in Laredo.



One night, Yolanda said,

he disappeared. They

couldn't find him,

couldn't raise him

on the radio.

Nothing.



There was a woman in the river.

She'd refused to halt. She

was pregnant, dripping as she

rose from the water toward the bank.



His bullet hit her just

below the diaphragm.



This was before "la amnistia."

Every night hundreds would flood

across together in the dark of the moon

returning like buffalo to the coyote

on the other bank.



A certain percentage

would always make it.



When they found him he was in Boys' Town

Drinking it off, whoring in a cantina.



This is a true story.

Yolanda said so,

then very suddenly

she went inside.





8 La Cama





She floats in silence

her blood in little swirls

over the glistening stones

of the bed.



He vomits an orange cloud

into the clear flowing water.



Fish, snakes

swarm to the wound above her belly

near the child's head

cradled in her womb.





9 The Projects





In the housing projects

in El Paso certain women

leave out dry clothing

for the people who've

crossed the river

and a little something to eat.



When La Migra comes

the kids on their bicycles say

"The mojados went thataway!"



As the Migra

turns the corner

the children laugh.





10 The Conquistador





In the darkness

the water of the river

are a rippling mirror of flame.



The conquistador, Alvarado,

has built a bonfire

and filled it

with the severed heads

of children





11 Burning



East of El Paso

There's a Migra checkpoint

on the highway.



If you have brown skin

they shine a flashlight

in your eyes

and ask where you're from.



The light burns.

Your have to answer



"America."





12 The Green Feather



This is the line between worlds.



A copper moon takes the horizon from the sun.



This is the fissure of the Earth's crust.



The dark cut whipped into the world's soft shoulder.



Here, the dreams of the ghost dancer,

the poetry of Vallejo,

our mother of corn,

a brown woman's yes,

are reduced to a blip on a screen,

a fly to be crushed

as it enter America's house.



This is the dark epiphany of the West.



A planet of headlights aimed at the poor.



Helicopter gun ships hunting Indians;

a raw telescopic frontier,

a laser incision,

an infrared nightmare.



I have dreamed it.

Geronimo is resurrected

in the desert highlands.

He is calling down

the Mogollon Rim.

He fills the copper mines

with reservoirs of blood.



The Maya have come to your border.

The Quechua come to your gate.

The Navaho and Huichol are dancing.





13 Juan





The police know the one

who comes from the mountains,

how he enters the streets

and waits for them.



They call him "Juan."

Thus they name their deaths.



He comes quietly,

beneath the flicker of electric lights

to the lot of a small store,

the smell of gasoline,

grease stains

and the whirring of the pumps.



He comes with a soft mound

of the blue pollen in his palm.



The police stare silently

at a Guatemalan woman,

the swaying of her long braids

as she walks to the Laundromat

with her basket balanced on her head.

They watch the cholos pass

in their low-slung cars

and the Salvadoran guerillero

who sips beer standing beside his truck.



At night the raids begin.

Women disappear

walking to the store.

Concrete barriers block the streets.

The green vans come. A call

is placed to La Guardia Nacional.



In the morning the garbage dumps

of San Salvador swarm with carrion birds.







14 Jorge





There is an empty lot,

a cracked foundation

covered in a spread

of splintered glass.



There wait there,

their silence broken by curses

and coming of the work trucks.

They crowd, then, like children

around an ice cream vendor;

they melt like chocolate

on the pavement.

The sun absorbs them.



A slow rain falls

in the villages

and the blue glass towers

of the city, where Jorge,

with his one good eye

cares for his family

picking up heavy plates,

half-eaten burgers

and ash trays

for the art crowd

and the nouveau riche.



His other eye is a glassy cloud

filled with corpses on the airport road.



He reads the constellations

of the blackened sky.



A single white hand

imprinted in smoke.



Skulls dissolving like sugar

on children's tongues.



In the total darkness of the grave,

in the silence of the untapped vein,

blood has no color.



But our dead are not under the earth.



Santiago, Managua and San Salvador weep.

The patron hovers, laughing

above the bodies of the disappeared.



The Maya file through the mountains

toward San Cristobal with

their rifles and red bandanas.



Lima is surrounded.



Rising from the darkened streets

men with burning wings

fill the clouds with whispers

and the sounds of torches.



Beneath the midnight sky

Jorge pours coffee,

raises his eyes

and smiles.