{"id":4553,"date":"2022-03-19T13:44:57","date_gmt":"2022-03-19T20:44:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/?p=4553"},"modified":"2025-03-06T21:33:36","modified_gmt":"2025-03-07T05:33:36","slug":"4553-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alteritas.net\/pastis\/4553-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Viaticum"},"content":{"rendered":"

Through Michoac\u00e1n where clouds
\n<\/span>make a second landscape in the sky,
\n<\/span>I nurse the fare you meted out
\nin a spare cork-stoppered jar,
\none day\u2019s worth of mezcalito<\/em>,
\nin lieu of salt, Aristotle.<\/p>\n

The bus grinds on. My gaze rises
\npast tassles of corn, cactus lobes
\nand hawks whose spirals shape the sky.
\nUp where the billows gape glistens
\nan aerial lake, on its edge,
\na nebulous sierra mirage.<\/p>\n

Swerves below cleave to earth.
\nFrom cloud comes cloud comes cloud.
\nVac\u00edo sin macizo no\u00a0<\/em>se puede ser<\/em>.
\nEmptiness needs\u00a0vessels to hold its spill.
\nGoing requires somewhere to go.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

In 1981, I had a first vacation from the wine business and, upon advice of my new-found friend Richard Haly, I went off to Mexico instead of France, a country too closely associated with work at that moment in my life.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

At this suggestion I visited Michoac\u00e1n and stayed with a friend of his, Enrique, about whom I have written in connection with the poem Gossamer So Sheer<\/a>. When it was time to take my leave, he gave me a little bottle of mescal to bide my time on the bus to Guadalajara. <\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The result, apart from some of my\u00a0Haiku in Mexico<\/a>, was this increasingly drunken meditation, one of my various ruminations on clouds, form and content.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Through Michoac\u00e1n where clouds make a second landscape in the sky, I nurse the fare you meted out in a spare cork-stoppered jar, one day\u2019s worth of mezcalito, 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 … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Viaticum”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

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