1986

2

Always the work of history: pustule that comes to a head
and breaks. Impatient flood, gathering waters that finally

break the dam; conflagration goaded by individual
sparks. The night the dictator and his family flee

their after all flimsy palace, the people swell
the streets, pushing past barricades— right up

to the gates which they find can be scaled and breached.
Students and activists, welders and plumbers; cerveza

drinkers, slum dwellers; shop girls, out of work carpenters,
taxi drivers. In the innermost chamber, dialysis machines

and oxygen tanks. Jewels, shoes, bank notes their papers
of state. And on the mountainside, dark halo of crows

circling. When the dispossessed return, they pour the blood
of slaughtered animals on his bust to exorcise his evil.

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