San Juan of the Tourists - Marigloria Palma

I used to run around with my seven Sundays folded
under my arm and seven pigeons crowning my brow.
I would wander the streets free and caught
in the sun’s crosshairs. The city is a herd
of feelings jammed in the traffic
of its own fragrance, its four-petaled rigor.
The port is a pool of migrant swans:
fumes of tourists, cracked shells of overpriced eggs.
The day’s a foreign hive of cameras and white lilies.
It’s goodbye and hello, it’s bonjour, it’s oui oui,
It’s guten Tag . . .

I stumble down the sidewalk with the eyes of the world on me:
a snowy flock of plovers, pink lobsters with ceramic eyelids.
A disaffected sun sinks its gold tooth in us.
Stubs us with its snout, its copper kiss.
Anyone with cornsilk hair lights up with a fine shine, flash of gold in transit.
The lips of the tourist are burnt cherries: expensive ornaments
for hardly a rumor of a face; they’re the rubies of the wind.
Scar on the lip: paradise in the gesture.

The clear light of march stirs us into its hissing simmer
of cream of wheat. By dusk it will be
a violet emulsion, and later, brown grapes.

We walk . . . They walk . . .
They’re newborn from my sun and the games it plays.
Me? I’m the ruthless essence of shadow and wind,
silver burnished to a high shine.
They’re filling my sleep with lacy minnows and blue antlers.
While I, woman of spent straw, dream a troubled dream
not at all defined . . .

I watch them float past.
Their parade grinds the last crumbs of my cookie into the street.

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Marigloria Palma [Gloria María Pagán y Ferrer] (1915 - 1994) Puerto Rico
Translated by Carina del Valle Schorske
Source: Small Axe sx salon 23