“… alla prima ruota
l’Uomo
…alla seconda ruota
l’Azione
…alla terza ruota
lo Strumento”
Giordano Bruno
Two frustrated semesters at universities in Florida and North Carolina [such is the nature of my daytime job] did not deter my pursuit of poetry truncated many years ago when, to satisfy the insistence of my father, I chose architecture over literature. The salvation finally came with the first bilingual on-line MFA program, established by the University of Texas in El Paso. Something good came out my itinerant consulting job, which had taken me from Nicaragua to Mexico, from Portugal to Honduras, from Miami to Detroit, and finally to Texas. All dreams are bound to materialize if we seize the occasion when it arises.
In this Advanced Poetry Workshop we had the opportunity –among many other benefits- to craft and deliver a collection of workshopped poems that are the basis of these introspective musings.
In following the analytical scheme provided by Professor Alcala, I will comment on these questions: 1] Is there a thematic thread that provides unity to the collection submitted? 2] Are there affinities or discrepancies with the ideas, concepts, and approaches studied in the course texts? 3] How was my revision process affected if I had one? 4] What conscious or unconscious techniques have I learned or improved upon? 5] What satisfying discoveries have I made about my own poetry and where do I want to take my craft next?
“Alla prima ruota l’Uomo”
We all go through different stages in our life and experience multiple changes in our body, expressions, thought, and beliefs. Poetic voice goes through the same transformation. We are the same, yet different. As we evolve and acquire a personality of our own certain recurring themes surface again and again in our craft. We may move from theme to theme, but I believe there is a canon that for most poets is difficult to abandon: it constitutes the essence of our being, the core or our craft, the eternal search [or return?] which answer eludes us. We cannot escape these themes or threads for we are them and, unless we suffer of multiple personality disorder, we will keep addressing the same ideas, problems, ideals, subject matters, and intellectual pursuits, as long as we do not fulfill our “cosmic mission”.
For several years now I have found that my poems address one or a combination of three themes: God, woman, and country. By God I mean religion, philosophy, metaphysics, and universal mind. By woman I mean relationships to others, to mother, to goddess, to Gaeia, to self. By country I mean exile, language, universe, politics, and justice. The themes overlap and cross boundaries for in my mind all is one and everything stems from the same source. Of the twelve poems submitted the following threads and central themes can be found:
No. poem Threads, topics theme
1 Bridge Religion, mother, father, love, relationships God
2 Hair Playfulness, woman Woman
3 Hotdogs relationships, inner search, love woman
4 Movie Playfulness, relationships woman
5 Travel Playfulness, travels country
6 Rubrics Exile, travels, language, inner search, justice country
7 Dreamcatchers Relationships, inner search, love woman
8 Deliverance Relationships, inner search, love woman
9 Tasba Pri Political, social unrest, justice, love, language country
10 Kumari Religion, inner search, relationships, love, travel woman
11 Counselor Inner search, relationships woman
12 Particle Travels, relationships country
Regarding tone, poems 2, 4, and 5 above are of a more playful and experimental nature and reality, as we know it outside of a poem, is more fantastic. Poem 1 is the most [maybe the only one] abstract of the collection and draws a lot on symbols and referents. Poems 6, 7, 8, and 12 allude to a more palpable reality still even if drawn from an exercise, like poem 12. Poems 9, 10, and 11 are all based on historical facts. Poem 10 is located in a far away land and is sprinklered with fiction. This poem is especially important to me for I wrote a movie script about it in the Advanced Screenwriting Workshop. Poem 9 was born as an exercise after reading Ana Akhmatova’s Requiem, but took a life of its own. Poem 11 reflects a personal plight I went through a few years ago. Lastly, poem 3, is the most realistic of the collection.
As many writers do, I keep a journal filled with ideas, projects, thoughts, drawings, and other poetic musings and paraphernalia. Poems 1, 3, 6, 7, and 11 were rescued from these journals. The rest were born out of exercises performed during the semester. An earlier version of poem 10 was published in the electronic magazine Artefacto and has a mix of English and Spanish stanzas. The newest version has just been accepted to a new upcoming magazine in Miami, Nagari.
I cannot say that I agree or disagree with the ideas and approaches discussed in the texts. I am of the opinion that all theories suffer the disease of pride: their author[s] thinks their one theory covers all the bases and explains all the things. There is no such thing as a theory of everything, at least not yet. I believe that as humanity advances the evolution of thought takes us to always new roads. Our species just appeared on the planet in the latest fraction of time. Each theory is capable of explaining one aspect of a phenomenon, in this case poetry and its role, techniques, tactics, and strategies, function, structure and form. It is what Ken Wilber et al call holons within holons; evergrowing and appearing spheres of knowledge, one giving birth to the next, spheres within spheres. In the end all holons in the poetic world could be reduced to three: the author’s holon [what intention s/he had in conscious or unconscious mind]; the object of art holon [what the object per se conveys and what the context it is bound to conveys as well]; and the observer holon [what the reader perceives, interprets, or makes of the text]. All three holons are in continual change. The Danilo Lopez of today will not be the same ten years from now. The poems I write today may have a different meaning to anybody twenty years from now. The objective and the archetypical reader of today will be different tomorrow.
“Alla seconda ruota l’Azione
When I first started writing, poems would come hitting me as lightning. My hands would pour an impressive amount of output barely catching up with brainwaves and a pounding heart. Back in those days [oblivious to technique, craft, and conventions] I would hardly or never revise what I wrote. According to me they were an expression of self and that was enough. There was no audience or it was not important to me. The mere act of writing, the outpouring of words and phrases justified all. Their raw state was their final and only possible state of being. The necessity of revision was born when the audience appeared. It was not enough to write for me, a solitary meaningless act I had to go through. I wanted to say something, to communicate intricacies of the mind and the soul that daily assaulted me. I wanted to point and show, to protest and change, to declare and admire, to chant and condemn, to critique and analyze. To learn and grow.
Attending poetry readings, devouring lots of books and magazines, organizing recitals all became part of the learning process, since studying literature was out of the question. Years later came the occasional chats with known poets and the timid sharing of my writings at workshops. Until I jumped in the water and started participating in readings myself and publishing in local newspapers and small magazines. Hearing from peers was not sufficient. I took a couple of adult education poetry workshops at Florida International University with the goal of eventually registering in their MFA program. Time constraints and family responsibilities, not to mention my job, got in the way. When I decided to start again in North Carolina, the same obstacles won over. By then I had read several books on craft and participated in many workshops, heard many critiques and publish a few poems, essays and short stories in both paper magazines and web sites. The on-line MFA at UTEP has been a blessing. I have learned a methodical revision process. I have learned to put ideas at rest in my journals for future development. I have learned to find inspiration in mathematical books, TV shows, daily life, restaurant menus, others poets’ work, news, etc. The whole world is a poetic place waiting to be expressed in those terms.
“Alla terza ruota lo Strumento”
The practice of poetry [Behn & Twitchell] provided a series of exercises that became very handy in producing ideas for poems. Novel ways to look at ideas of poems and the utilization of multiple sources to mine new work were very useful to me. There are still many exercises we did not do but I plan to use in the future. Koch’s Making your own days great contribution for me was how he dissects poetry in relation to language canon and music patterns. The anthology at the end provides a wide selection of poets from [almost] all ages and places. It is not common to delight oneself in such a display of diversity in styles, geography, theme, theory, praxis, and philosophy. This was an incentive for me to refresh my knowledge of other languages to truly appreciate some poets in their original tongues.
Spahr’s main point of interest for me was a new use of language poems. This is a mini-reflection in many ways of Cardenal’s Cosmic Canticle and Neruda’s Canto General regarding the treatment of political and social protest anchored in the universal brotherhood [hermandad would be more apropriate for it denotes no gender preference] of mankind. In Dictee Cha pointed a different approach of what a book is. For some time I have been toying with with the idea of making a different book, mixed with other media. Dona Nobis Pacem [published last year in Miami] and Dead Souls [a DVD currently in the works] are crude approximations to this book-idea of mine. In the meantime I also read other poetry books that contributed to the learning experience, namely Stardust [Bidart], Post Meridien [Ruefle], Averno [Glück] and Uno y el Universo [Sabato].
In studying the course materials, Prof. Alcala’s Notebook entries and the valuable input from fellow students, a device for critiquing and self-critiquing poems was born: twenty five analysis lines that I will use as a scheme of analysis. Not all could be applicable at one time, but when the mind goes blank and the sensations are not ignited by what I read, the following points or questions or topics could be asked to jumpstart the analytical mode. I am sure that many more questions could be asked, but these I’ve compiled in reading my peers and my professor; plus my own experience. Look at it as an instrument of use for analysis:
1 What are the subject, verbs, and object of each sentence in the poem?
2 Paraphrase the poem to see if you understood it, retell the story
3 Who is the speaker?
4 What is the situation?
5 What are the issues, ideas, and mood?
6 What is the tone and the emotions?
7 Is the poet the subject of the poem?
8 What contrasts appear?
9 Does the title relate to the body of the poem?
10 What allusions are present?
11 What is the diction, word choice, and meaning?
12 What denotation and connotation or words?
13 Any wordplay?
14 Any unusual words?
15 What is the level: formal, informal, colloquial, dialectical, slang?
16 Are diction and tone in sync?
17 What imagery is present? Do they appeal to the senses? Which ones? To the emotions? Which ones?
18 Is the language descriptive? Figurative? Metaphors? Analogies?
19 Is progression of time present? How?
20 What is the rhythm? The metric?
21 Are there any sounds? Onomatopeia, alliterartion? Assonance? Consonance? Rhyme?
22 What is the structure? Ideas? Sounds? Free verse? Formal verse?
23 Any symbolism? Realism? The setting? Place, situation, time, social, political, physical?
24 What literary schools would be useful in analyzing the poem?
25 Who speaks? To whom? What does the speaker feel? What is the plot? The tension? The arc? Conflict?
I have been very fortunate to have participated in this Advanced Poetry Workshop and intend to continue the life long learning process of poetry. It is the most precious gift that the gods have given humankind.
∞
The bridge
Hers is not like other bridges
The one my mother builds
To connect me to my father
Or the one my father builds
To connect me to the world
Hers can resist
Centuries of snow
And countless miles of sun
Or a thousand parsecs of galaxies
As to a good shepherd
Her cares allow me to
Go in search of food and water
And as to any celebrant
To freely move around the altar
Hers is a different kind of bridge
Not like Sister Juliette’s
Happy to see us
In front of the cross
Praying rosaries
Breathing deeply
Asking ourselves
Will we be alive tomorrow?
Her bridge may not be a
Conferred peace
But it helps to discard
All the hollow columns
The empty pillars
And the slow poisoning
Of an old curse
I cannot describe
(The monsters in my dreams
Have long been gone
Yet a sort of restlessness
Kept disturbing me all these years)
Maybe like my Guardian Angel’s
–who always told me
The good news- her bridge is
The fruit of innocent pacts
Consequently
Here you will never see the current
Reflecting in silence
The arc of the bridge but
Broken waves and edgy eddies
Her bridge rams itself
Against the sands
Rock crushing on rock
And the bridge
Grinding
Grinding
Grinding
Thrusting against the riverbed
To one day obliterate
My gray obsidian center.
Her hair
Was thick and messy
Like a bird’s nest falling upwards.
We often make this sort of comparison
Oblivious to the facts behind the scene
Quick to judge, sentence and condemn
Her hair was not messy at all
It was a poodle’s except
Not shaved
So let me start over
Her hair was wavy as a spring and
It fell in all directions
Like beer spume or lava
Or words spoken by a preacher
But often we also see things that are not
For accustomed to use only our own
Eyes the brain develops neuronatic
Connections that paint a landscape which
Refuses to peacefully co-exist
So let me try one last time
Her hair was straight as a spear but
Soft as water
It didn’t wave like a river
But cascaded like emoticons
Only a child could imagne
I would later ratify
As I tilt my head to the right
Her hair appears in its entire splendor
Finally striking down all judgment
All sentencing, all ruminations so she could
Rise straight to the clouds
The movie never made
It is one thing to blow a horn and another to light
The atmosphere with fire and related
Iridescences of the heart
The movie had certain qualities that we, as
Holders of the keys could not report to
The upper echelons
First was the fact that the actress hated the
Leading man as much as I hated my own guts
So in the matter of me vs. humanity the judges
Ruled against my guts
Then the Butoh dancer explained to me that in
Matters of natural selection
Her fee arose from three to six thousand so
Photos to be posted in the web site did not
Represent her dancing figure anymore than a
Bleat would mask an exploding meteorite
Second was the case of the rolling poem
This was distracted by the fadeout girl tending the
Tent, her skinny fingers obliterated all
Hopes of wanton and early souvenirs
Third we ran out of actors so only the
Ubiquitous voiceover integrated the cast at
The time
“It is time to finalize the design” the director
Next door said and we all decided it was apt hour
To pull the plug and pack off our decorum
Travel
From up here all looks abnormal
Such is the impression things impress
Upon us when we care to climb to
Higher places, but we should keep
Things in perspective and know
That anyone can fall or climb at
A moment’s notice
The plane was a vine of blushes
All passengers were minding their own
Little coffee cups and nibbling on
Tiny sugar cars
From my window I could hear
The bags running up and down
The alleys in the luggage compartment
But no one cared
The pilot kept checking the tires in mid air waving
Good bye to ducks passing by
In a neatly formed V pointing north
The leader realized soon enough they
Were headed the wrong way
I don’t know if he changed course or not
Little and long rivers down below reminded us
That life also is capable of changing
Its course for us following mountainous
Forms of red, green, blue and brown lands
Other than not being able to rest or sleep
It was a pleasant flight with polite and nice
Stewards floating gracefully in the
Neatly pressed blue uniforms, blue eyes
Blue hairdos and blue nail polish
We all drank and read and typed profusely
On improvised laptops and coffee mugs
When I got home to the North Pole
The ducks were having a party
rubrics
with a trembling hand
borges mimics a signature
on the first page of my red book
-argentinean embassy, Lisbon 1985-
hands it back to me
some other time I will stamp the date
penta hotel
rafael alberti seats, overjoyed
besides me
shouting the name of my country
euphoric
stroking his long hair, places the glass of wine
on the side table
and signs my 1985 ocre agenda
palacio de queluz, alvaro cunhal enters
and we conjuncture the political evaluation
of a communist paradise in nicaragua
i have forgotten what i did
to compare terms is not enough for incomplete
to confide in others is inconvenient for scandalous
my clients are strange children
using stationary artifacts
impossible to classify,
could it be that the need is mutual and that
-grammatically speaking-
the abysses that unite us
depend on the sense of adventure
we continually neglect?
(the redheaded poet is a rare orchid in
this flowering midnight)
as long as work permits
we will create the corresponding pamphlets
we will make them circulate among live peoples
and the beauty of time will
confirm so many isolated pronouns
so many culprit desires
so many family tergiversations
life lowers our expectations
and to live in the united states of america
imposes a toll on lost words
killing ten or twenty poems at once
diabolical artists anti-war demonstrations
old dictions and styles new confusing syntaxes
i would give all my fortunes away
to have my language again
Dreamcatchers
I want to look for you -not the one you will be-
But the One you were when in past lives
-In China, France, and Egypt- we were together
When we were gypsies and had
A complete disregard for this life
When we had each other’s lips to bite softly
And our own searching nails to mark
The other’s back during lovemaking
I want to revive the single-candled nights
Slowly melting away
The bottle of Merlot unhurriedly growing down
I want to recover the Indian Sorceress
Who naked danced in rave bathed in oil
Exorcizing evil spirits, surrounded by angels
I want to be the terrible man
Put at your silence reach by someone above
The same who wouldn’t dare approach your fortress
Yet experienced your deeper bliss
I want to be the same pretender who unlocked
The curtain hiding this verse
Astonished, eyelids enclosing you
But now is not the time
Not in this century of broken transgressions
Not on this ship so close to the trade
I’ll have to fan my face at sunset
Eyes fixed on advancing darkness
I’ll have to call upon a light that doesn’t hurry
Its path on the waters
I’ll have to wait the whisper of your smile
Your fearless utterance
I’ll have to challenge the sunrise
And be there when the love of wanting me is born in you
- Again -
Like when we were someone else.
Tasba Pri
“Yapti Tasba Masraka nani Aslatakanka
Toward the end of 1984, peace talks opened between the MISURASATA [Miskito] Organization and the government of Nicaragua. These were the first peace talks between Managua and any organization engaged in armed struggle in the country. The process included four rounds of negotiations over a period of eight months in Bogota and Mexico City.
The agenda of the negotiations was based on the causes of the conflict: systematic repression and the denial of the historical rights to land and autonomy. (…) the majority of the Indians displaced to the Tasba Pri camps were allowed to return to their traditional communities along the Wangi (Coco River).”
YATAMA
Republic of Nicaragua
February 1989” [1]
1
Those were the days when risen martyrs
Scrutinized us from banners and street names
Tasba Pri lay silent like a phoenix still in ashes
In those days, fooled by slogans and grand promises
Young patriots befell to flesh on which cannons fed
In thin lines we marched through misty mountains
And dense confusing rivers
Hoarse machines hover above us
They drop the fruits of deadly entrails
We quiet Miskitos torched the land the aliens seized.
2
Dark soldiers took me away one night
They pulled me like a beast turned prey
Wild birds and protean monkeys witnessed
The iron that crumpled my skin
My lips were cold like an empty glass
My eyes sought your face in a broken mirror…
Remember!
You would be scolded at the National Palace
Along with ranks of ousted widows
3
A sudden sun beams through the forest
Archaic canopies pulled apart
Away from the edge where crocodiles
Splash and kill
We wait in silence for a fitting instant
When the waters clear and the fish snooze
4
(…) the Nicaraguan government, in February 1982, forcibly relocated about 8,500 Miskitos from communities along the Rio Coco to four resettlement camps about 60 km to the south, an area now known as Tasba Pri. [2]
They wait like panthers, eyes on a mirage
Of gentle bullets decimating our stock
You see them in dreams, a lonely woman
Writing from afar to my shadow, to my child
From a country with nameless streets and
Empty nouns your letters reach me in strange ways
I digest your pictures along empty hotel corridors,
Precarious shady parks where prostitutes meander
And dense crowded manifestations where we all banter
Angry slurs against the government
5
If you could listen to the rains I’ve seen
Boys with broken kites, their siblings and dogs sacrificed
Entire families slaughtered in the name of peace
And revolution
What will be of them in coming years? [3]
How long will Bilwi, Kukalaya, and Wawa Boom bleed?
How does this land hold its ground in front of
Mad Judas and assassin Goliaths?
6
While they interrogate me you stay with friends not daring
To cross the line that separate redemption from sacrifice
I find my self repeating daughters names like mantras
They deliver me from Avernos and miseries
But when the ice is not silencing your voice
It is their fire that negates me sanity
The camps are losing density, prisoners come and evaporate
Their brows wet with fear and sweat,
They emit no sound when the steel axes their lives
7
For twenty weeks they have tormented me
They show me pictures of broken bodies and
Limps severed at rabid razzias, but I don’t yield.
A golem-soldier excoriates my skin
He grunts the verdict awaiting my turn
Only the river holds, grotesque in its calm
Neutral as a corpse
A giant blade shines on my eyes announcing the
Intention, the neuter, and the end
[1] © 1999 Center for World Indigenous Studies
[2] Article copyright by Cultural Survival, Inc.
[3] Hurricane Felix hit on 4 September 2007 the North Region of Nicaragua causing the biggest disaster since Hurricane Mitch in 1998.
The impacted region has a territorial size of 32,000 sq. km with a total population of some 314,000, mainly Miskitos and Mayagnas people.
In the Tasba Pri district, wells and rivers have been contaminated by poisonous metallic residues from the mining industry. (ACT International, 2007)
Kumari
To Rashmila Shakya,
Virgin-goddess of Nepal [1]
1
I kept on looking intently
In the dream-mode reality
Knowing about complications
And spiritual intelligence
Attractors are a difficult
Thing to manage
The human heart is filled with power
Happy the man who reached
the homeport
Leaving behind seas and tempests
Whose dreams are dead
Or never born
Who seats in Bremen, drinks bear
by the fire
In peace he rests.
Happy the man who like a flame decays
Happy the man who like the sand darkens
Happy the man who frees his load and cleans his brow
He sits by the road:
Fears no one, waits not, hopes nothing
Fixing the falling sun with his eyes recalls
And you kept my book, a picture of myself
Back in 1886, a portrait so deeply intense
That a piece of my soul already belongs to you,
Kumari.
2
On a night like this one
The north winds bring snow forth
Someone sleeps in front of the TV
And someone decides to steal
On a night like this one, my flower blossoms
Watered by Kumari each day
On a day like this one
A comet showers us
From the deep abyss of kosmos
Some man stretches by his
Woman
And stops feeling his own weight
Important is today, not tomorrow
And time that briskly passes
On a night like this one
The witches of Salem would
Choose the moonlight more convenient
To their craft
And concoct the potion.
There is a man in Potsdam
Wailing to the moon
Sending messages to the woman who faced him
To the mirror of himself
(The poet tenses his arch transformed in Eros,
He seeks harmless words, serene
Words with the force of a hurricane
And the broad secrets of blood and seed)
Oh! Kumari, Kumari
In your breast you carry cold hungers
Something my chest misses at times.
They couldn’t break what is left
Within you
You are a strong woman,
Colorless
Am I the empty companion whom no longer
Has a name?
Am I the forsaken soul who
Can no longer weep?
You no longer grieve
So poor
You no longer fear
So tired
Spend me, a once-strong man
If we have to meet again
Out there, in the world, Sweet Beneath The Sun,
What kind of face would we confront each other with?
________________
[1] “The Royal Kumari is always a Buddhist girl of the Sakya caste. The girls are examined for the "32 perfections of a goddess," but almost certainly the list is simple: she must have had perfect health, with no serious illnesses, unblemished skin, black hair and eyes, no bad body smells, be premenstrual, and have lost no tooth. Her horoscope must in no way clash with the King’s.
There are a number of former Royal Kumaris, some of whom have held the position up until the age of thirteen and even sixteen. When one is declared unfit as Kumari, she immediately ceases to be
regarded as a goddess, goes through a final puja, and hands back her jewels and red garb. The spirit of the goddess is said to have vacated her body. She now returns to her family, but probably never to normal life.”
John Borthwick, The Living Goddess
the counselor
she sits by the window each afternoon
her men, all her men, are an experiment
they come naked as a statue.
they display black wounds and she inspects them
they rant and cry and she listens
they loath on arrogance and she jots it down
for one hour these men wear no masks
or just a small one
she can crush them or build them,
but takes only notes and appointments, collects co-payments
appointments and clear their cobwebs off
their brains and shuts her heart down
I know her, she knows me
Once, I collapsed at the bank
the soap opera way:
Eyes rolled back, limbs inert
like a talking doll with dead batteries
The doctor at the hospital thought there was something
Wrong with my heart
A medic said my brain was overcharged
With question marks and desperation
A nurse saw a microbe in my blood
So she extracted more blood
And some more
And then some more
A psychiatrist read a ghost in my dreams
Dark lengthy nightmares where
Moths run after me like monsters
Someone saw a hurricane approaching my eyes
There is no ocean left in my chest
Just an expanse of desert
A cold heritage, lonely like a candle
She makes me feel special
Quiet like a monk, short as a retreat
My body used to be slim and scarce
It had no straight jackets, it ran on oily rails
Showing its red vest and clumsy powers
It had a grand set of muscles
today, it lies by the pool
a glass of wine in its hand, the ironed eyes
gazing at the Big Dipper.
it doesn’t care too much about leather seats or
black walled offices, it doesn’t long for
briefcases packed with dollars or
hefty bank accounts
it only wants an oasis of silence
thick like a mountain
it wants the counselor’s naked hands
drawing my skin inch by inch
If a particle moves along a line
According to the law s = f (t) where
S represents the position of particle P
On a line at time t, then the velocity v of
P at time t is given by ds/dt
Calouste Gulbenkian never crossed the
Ponte 25 de Avril
He died sixteen years earlier
When Dictator Salazar was at
The height of his power
No, watch him walk the Alfama neighborhood
Overlooking the Tejo river and
With Laura Alves –his companion of latter days-
Hanging from his forearm
Every polynomial whose degree
Is greater than or equal to 1
Becomes infinite as x does
So they start at the Military Museum along
The rúa do Jardim de Tabaco
Where old couples also stroll, slowly
Like the big ships exiting the river
Never holding hands, but they do for
If a function is continuous over an
Interval, we can draw its graph
Without lifting pencil from paper
Further down at the Casa dos Bicos
They eat a dish of pataniscas with
Bual wine 1772 for it complements
The tasty salt-coded fritters her mother
Liked so much, the requijão cheese, round
A cylindrical shell may be regarded as
the outer skin of a cylinder, its volume is
the volume of the rectangular solid formed
when this skin is peeled from the cylinder
and flattened out, as Calouste and Laura
flatten the street with their black shoes
From afar Nossa Senhora de Conceição
Opens her arms like the Christ on Alfândega
Street while Calouste and Laura break west
Then north on rua Madalena towards
Castelo São Jorge
It is always possible to approximate the
Value of a definitive integral
With the derivatives of life and death
Ω
