MIRAGE

                                                                        "My speech is going to be

                                                                         a long journey..." -- Pablo Neruda

                        Until the mirages appear, you tell yourself

                        that you have not traveled far,

                        though your feet and back ache.

                        Your mouth cracks at the edges; your tongue

                        touches dry crevices.  Your hair

                        stands like shrubs of dust.  Your watch

                        says noon, but in what year of what century?

                        It could be a long time ago, or to come.  Your mind

                        swears that it can grasp light year time,

                        but how to write it down?

                        The blister on one foot has spread.

                        It is on the other one, too.  After

                        so much walking, you'd think that your skin

                        would be hard, like dog paws, but, instead,

                        it rips apart, like rotten cloth.

                        You beg for a quick snakebite to end it all.

                        Your mind drags your body through an age of sand.

                        When the mind tears, will the soul shatter?

                        On the horizon, and to the sides, you begin

                        to see them, the crystal palaces that stand

                        delicate and noble upon the sea.  Chandeliers dangle

                        from the sky, and fish jump in lakes.  What freshness!

                        Figures move ahead--do they call you? 

                        You take them to be vendors, yes, closer, they walk togeth­er

                        and carry things, like bags.  Yes, you see them clearly;

                        they carry goat skins of water.

                        They walk toward the same sky you seek

                        at the same pace you step.  You cannot catch them--

                        the teasers!

                        There are skulls, too, and skeletons--vapors or real?

                        Your mind struggles to sustain itself.  The light

                        tries to kill you--years of heat bear down on your neck.

                        Land rises and trembles.  Glass palaces crumple,

                        lakes evaporate, and gardens burst into flames.

                        The water carriers melt.  Fire flares around you;

                        buries you in smoke.  Your eyes

                        water, then burn.  Fire is everywhere.  Hot, hot fire

                        scorched air, roasted clouds; fire on your limbs

                        hot, hot to the bone, to the hot flames of your red blood.

                        A cool breeze wafts your hair.

                        Your lips

                        are moist. It is easy to swallow.  The rock

                        in your throat has dissolved.  The difficult stage has ended.

                        It is quiet.  The white, linen sheets smell sweet

                        and the pillow fluffs up in your hands.

                        Your eyes

                        splash in the rain.  Such soft lights strike

                        the clouds with gentle voices near your bed.

                        And music?  You laugh to have had thought

                        that the valley of vapors could destroy you.

                        Some do not make it--they die gulping sand,

                        thinking it to be water.  The key

                        is to conquer time--you can share

                        that with others, future travelers across the heat.

                        Defeat time and its light cannot stop you.

                        The victory is calm and cool.

                        When they found him in the gulch, he did not want

                        them to move him.  It was peace without them,

                        and pain when they poked at his limbs.

                        He shook a blistered fist at them.

                        The light crushed his sight

                        --the cruel fools!

                        Why did they insist?  His crusted eyelids

                        cracked open and he saw them

                        hunched over him like vultures:

                        the water carriers!

                                                           

                                                            -- C.S. Cholas, 1984

                                                                        (somewhere in Mexico)