Passing through the cementario en 20 Avenida with mi sombrilla and the splash of drops soaking through mis zapatos, I notice the decapitated marble goddess watching over the long-gone La Familla Paz encased in 6-foot long rectangular concrete. A lone woman in black stands under su sombrilla at the end of the path remembering a husband, brother, nino who died too early
sleeping in the concrete
standing in the rain
I wander through the Mercado Flores into a cafe where I drink cafe con leche for 5 quetzals and stumble across a poem in an anthology of world poetry.
The Postclassical World A.D. 250-1200
Meng Hao-jan
Written for old friends in Yang-Jou City while spending the night on the Tung-Lu River
I hear the apes howl sadly
In dark mountains.
The blue river
flows swiftly through the night.
The wind cries
In the leaves on either side of the bank.
The moon shines
On a solitary boat.
These wild hills
Are not my country.
I think of past ramblings
In the city with you.
I will take
These two lines of tears,
And send them to you.
Far away
At the western reach of the sea.
The lesson I learned walking beside the dead in the rain on May Day:
Juan Chi (210 - 263)
That is why the wise man drifts along the river of time.
What is passing cannot remain.
Such are the thorns and thistles of this world.
World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse from Antiquity to Our Time
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