November
2006
Curfew in Medellín, 1989
If I were to tell you
How we watched from balconies
Those silent, white-helmeted
Troops baby-stepping as in a cortege behind
White tanks snaking forth reluctantly,
That big, bad city as quiet
As the restless ocean,
Dogs barking to the sound of transistor radios
With their salsa defiant,
The down-and-outs flitting like moths
Through the street-lights
To shake unseen with their children
In darkened doorways;
How the next day a bomb
Across the road
Blew out the windows of our penthouse,
Kerchiefed sicarios running out of a workshop
To the beat of the rat-tat-tat of pistol fire,
Four bodies, covered, later
Stopping the traffic; how the glazier, descendant
Of some German sect-colony, would
Have brightened Hitler’s dreams
With his sapphire eyes and hair
As bold as the sun of Constantine,
It would be meaningless.
I enjoyed this poem very much