Poem of the Week

I never thought I’d spend my eightieth

in a year of plague and populists.

But here I am, confined to my house

in Mexico City, accompanied by Betty,

my wife—all life long,

and by three feral cats that came in off the street;

and oh, by the Virgin of the Apocalypse’s image

lit day and night on the stairway wall.

Astral twins, my daughters Chloe and Eva

have turned into my spiritual mothers,

and Josephine, my only grandchild, into a playful grandma.

They are in London and Brooklyn, separated from us,

behind windows, seeing and hearing

the ambulances of death pass by.

Paradises there are that have no country

and my suns are interior suns,

and love—more so than dream—

is a second life,

and I will live it to the last moment

in the tremendous everydayness of the mystery.

Surrounded by light and the warbling of birds,

I live in a state of poetry,

because for me, being and making poetry are the same.

For that I would want, in these final days,

like Titian, to depict the human body one more time.

Dust I shall be, but dust in love.