Lyric № 126034
Adibe's Song (third-time's-the-charm revision, less Spanish)
(on election night, in the men's residencia)
It's come to me, you've come to me, hermano,
how happier I'd be simple, a grasshopper-
legged brown Michoacana
with my knotted scarffull of men's eyes dragging
up to the hacienda, with rain coming -
And if I'd touched you then, could I have had you?
You, with your hot new smoke-smell, your worn briefcase
bulging with God and tomorrow's headlines:
'The liberals have taken back the country'
and 'Jefe Alboroto and Motin proclaims
no more corruption in the city, ever.'
I'm my own grandmother making tortillas
in a white breathless dawnlight, thinking,
Which liberales, these, ours or theirs?
and, Is this why they closed all the bars?
and, Rain's coming like an old god hied
out of the seawrack by the jungle's breast.
And it comes to me,
how readily I
could turn smoke, press
myself on the guitar's
wide mouth. How I'd knot my scarf in the morning
for a whole town of unsuspecting eyes.
And you, my Plaster Saint, you'll still be deciding
whether to cry 'Love' or 'Country' at the last
as the tracers come sirening from the trees,
as I twist the thumbscrews on the electric bed.
9 comments
Is she a she? The scarf implies so.
Why is hermano not Hermano?
Is a hacienda a residencia? Not ordinarily.
Why are housewives in a men's residencia?
Why capital Heaven, but not church?
How does she know tomorrow's headlines?
Last line is good.
2) I hope so. No, I know so. I have a hard time thinking of good Spanish names. When I need one, I think of someone I met in Mexico whose name never made it in an Enrique Iglesias song.
3) I dunno. Spanish speakers don't capitalize it.
4) No. The hacienda's where the big boss lives, the residencia's where exchange students and bored Mexico City kids live.
5) In that earlier version, Heaven (Cielita) was a girl who lived at a black magic store. True story. Incidentally, the main work of the staff at the black magic store I knew was carving Jesuses with enormous phalluses. I dropped all that from the poem though. For the better.
6) They're revolutionaries.
7) I hope it's better now.
I'll add some garnish though, have a ten.
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