You Condescended to me for Years

You condescended to me for years

explaining to me the simplest things as though I were some kind of idiot

If you had any imagination you would have appointed me Inspector of Chickens, like Borges

but you lacked the wit even for that, I suppose

You swooned to the Rilkean excesses of my colleagues

You named buildings after mass murderers

and filled fútbol stadia with the Spectacles of Kitsch

In such a climate I could only be a non-entity

Invisible in my own continent

Though recognized in the North as a voice significant as McKuen or Bukowski