People are the plot
and what they do here –
which is mostly sit
or walk through. The afternoon sun
brings out the hornets:
they dispute with no one, they too
are enjoying their ease
along the wet brink of the fountain,
imbibing peace and water
until a child arrives,
takes off his shoe
and proceeds methodically
to slaughter them. He has the face
and the ferocious concentration
of one of those Aztec gods
who must be fed on blood.
His mother drags him away, half-shod,
and then puts back the shoe
over a dusty sock.
Some feet go bare, some sandalled,
like these Indians who march through
– four of them – carrying a bed
as if they intended to sleep here.
Their progress is more brisk
than that of the ants at our feet
who are removing – some
by its feelers, some
supporting it on their backs –
a dead moth
as large as a bird.
As the shadows densen
in the gazebo-shaped bandstand
the band are beginning to congregate.
The air would be tropical
but for the breath of the sierra:
it grows opulent on the odour
of jacaranda and the turpentine
of the shoeshine boys
busy at ground-level,
the squeak of their rags on leather
like an angry, repeated bird-sound.
The conductor rises,
flicks his score with his baton –
moths are circling the bandstand light –
and sits down after each item.
The light falls onto the pancakes
of the flat military hats
that tilt and nod
as the musicians under them
converse with one another – then,
the tap of the baton. It must be
the presence of so many flowers enriches the brass:
tangos take on a tragic air,
but the opaque scent
makes the modulation into waltz-time seem
an invitation – not to the waltz merely –
but to the thought that there may be
the choice (at least for the hour)
of dying like Carmen
then rising like a flower.
A man goes by, carrying a fish
that is half his length
wrapped in a sheet of plastic
but nobody sees him. And nobody hears
the child in a torn dress
selling artificial flowers,
mouthing softly in English, ‘Flowerrs’.
around the tin cupola of the bandstand
patrol to the beat of the band:
this is the democracy
of the tierra templada – a contradiction
in a people who have inherited
so much punctilio, and yet
in all the to-and-fro
there is no frontier set:
the shopkeepers, the governor’s sons,
the man who is selling balloons
in the shape of octopuses, bandannaed heads
above shawled and suckled children
keep common space
with a trio of deaf mutes
talking together in signs,
all drawn to the stir
of this rhythmic pulse
they cannot hear. The musicians
are packing away their instruments:
the strollers have not said out their say
and continue to process
under the centennial trees.
A moon has worked itself free
of the excluding boughs
above the square, and stands
unmistily mid-sky, a precisionist.
The ants must have devoured their prey by this.
As for the fish… three surly Oaxaqueños
are cutting and cooking it
to feed a party of French-speaking Swiss
at the Hotel Calesa Real.
The hornets that failed to return
stain the fountain’s edge,
the waters washing and washing away at them,
continuing throughout the night
their whisperings of ablution
where no one stirs,
to the shut flowerheads and the profuse stars.
Oaxaca