Come a little bit closer, Serafina, until
I can know your pleasures as a maiden,
because at this distance
I only know of your anguish.


Glioma, astrocytoma, nephritis, porphyria.
names of the flowers of death.
names of the stars of death.


Dreaming up happiness in Paracho
The women go from door to door
with guitars in bundles on their backs.
In Zinacantán, they come down
the mountain trail with calla lillies.


Watching the rain fall in Paracho
satellite dishes making castles on the roofs
so that there is a magic elf in each house.
The jungle and the cable and the-rain
in Uruápan.


Talk to me Serafina,
because I've just found you.
Because the world is ending again.
Tell me your pleasures
because my throat is closing with pain.


I know that you used to wake up in the night
between the aggravation of surviving
and the terror of dying
at the end of the last century.


You find me here at the end of this millennium
begging you to pray for our pleasures,
because now we have
war without smoke,
war without respite.


Watching the rain in Paracho,
the water sliding over
the cobblestones in Moorish shapes,
the sadness of exile penetrates me
like the mildew the walls
and I remember that
I wake up everyday in exile.


Then I remember that you have
almost a century of banishment.


I see you
floating above the globe of the earth
in a bluish egg of light
calm at last, while it rains
meanwhile
in this County of Mendocino.


You keep afloat
1,000 kilometers precisely above
the seawall of Havana, Cuba
by means of curiosity alone.


Sing me a song, Serafina,
remind me of the enchantments
of living
and of dying.