Through Michoacán where clouds make
a second landscape in the sky,
I nurse the fare you meted out
in a spare cork-stoppered jar,
one day’s worth of mescalito,
in lieu of salt, Aristotle.
The bus grinds on. My gaze rises
past tassles of corn, cactus lobes
and hawks whose spirals shape the sky.
Up where the billows gape glistens
an aerial lake, on its edge,
a nebulous sierra mirage.
These swerves below must cleave to earth.
From cloud comes cloud comes cloud.
”Vacío sin macizo no
se puede ser” — emptiness needs
vessels to contain its spill.
Going requires somewhere to go.
***
For snapshot of Enrique, see Pátzcuaro 1981.