Virgil Suárez
Prospero in Havana
Given to bouts of melancholia, the tempest-raiser
spends time in the garden, picking hibiscus
with the gentlest touch of his fingers, unsteady
in this old age, arthritic, eyes burned-on-the-page
from so much reading, the old books stacked
around the walls of his clapboard shack, the poets
come from all over the island to borrow paper,
which the old man makes for them, recycles,
the vats of paper pulp fertile breeding ground
for the mosquitos which bite his thin exposed legs,
the wouns fester from his constant scratching.
He misses his daughter, and at night he sighs
and curses the darkness. By candlelight he reads
his ancient texts, tries to find order in the minute,
the mundane. The natives call him El Mago Blanco
because of his paper magic, the way he watches
the storms roll inland, like an illusion of dream,
from chaos to creation, from reality to realization,
this tempestas of time, how he can make time flow
as sand dropping backwards into the hourglass,
to be possessed, this alchemy of desire so far, so near.
Page(s) 64-65
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