Poetry in Transit

When will the grown-ups come home?
The flesh is tired and I've read all the books,
Fleeing, rushing down--how steady the gait of the mule down the abyss!
And who, if I screamed, could hear me from those angelic
orders? At five o'clock in the afternoon.
At five o'clock on the dot in the afternoon?

The sound of water... Sing, muse, the wrath--
Hypocrite reader, among twenty snowy mountains.
I will go to Santiago de Cuba,
With "Romeo y Julieta,"
with ashes, with self-populating seas,
At five in the afternoon.

From rivers north of intention,
In the middle of the the road of my life,
I will go to Santiago--
Exhausted by talk / of the only happy life.
This hill was always so dear to me
At five in the afternoon.

I never winked back at fireflies,
Drinking with disgust the water of prostitution.
The barbarians are due here today.
You must change your life.
I will go to Santiago!
At five in the afternoon.