TRAVEL REPORT

This will make you laugh:

I am homeless and have no shoes.

The paths I used never ended,

Nor reached any place.  The vines

Left burn marks on my chest.

I had no machete.

My clothes have not been pressed

Since my chin was shaved;

You see for yourself it's been some time.

If I had shoes, I would remove them

Before setting foot upon your rug.

I can stand by the door.

The stories (and rumours of more)

Kept me on my way, but most were lies,

Or altered fabrications.  Only

The ugly ones were true.

A glass of water is all that I choose.

Tell my friends that

I am alive and have no news.

                        -- C.S. Cholas

            Corozal Town, Belize, 21 July 1989

IN THE MILPA

                                                                       

"For the forming of the earth

they said 'Earth'.  It arose suddenly,

just like a cloud, like a mist, now forming, unfolding..."  Popol Vuh

From the air this country looks

like a green, floating garden in a white frame.

The sky's special shade of blue makes one feel

that paradise is near; giant puffs of white proclaim

joy across the open air.

Yesterday's rain charged the earth,

crashing hard upon banana leaves,

as if a war had begun: the roar muffled our voices.

Afterwards, toads rejoiced in bellowed coos

that kept us awake until daybreak.

Along the lane lined by cane, rain water

has brought heaven to dragonflies.

Puddles spot the white, clay road like a map of lakes.

That Mayan couple turns into children when they wade

among their corn and squash.  Growth is a glow

for them, a love affair that keeps them young.

In dark overalls with a rifle slung upon his back,

this farmer is more boy than grandfather.

His eyes flash:  "this is a way of life."

Mapaches—raccoon-- compete for corn.

They call them kuluk in Maya.

The lady says there is a calabasa in the sunlight

on the vine, right there, alone,

like a diamond begging freedom from the earth.

When the sky humbly bows to dusk, I lean on my car

and tell them, "I can take you home now,"

to their village nearby, but the man points to the sun

barely above the western horizon,

"We have another hour of light; we'll stay here until night

and walk back after work is done."

I leave them to their love affair with the land.

I wave before I drive away, but they have already

vanished behind the corn below the pink sky

and the myriad dragonflies.

         

-- C.S. Cholas 

Corozal, Belize (October 1989)

XAXAY

Dirt-road town;

Wind worn clumps of clay

Alone on the distant, friendless land

More than rock walls surround it.

Church bells toll out

Our sins; the guilt and faults

Of our deepest, secret thoughts

Church bells warn:

Strangers endanger our solitude,

Dare to expose the barren gossip we live by;

The dreary secrets entombed in our souls.

Forgive us our trespasses

As we build walls against trespassers.

The road's foreboding dust

Heralds intruders

Rare as water in these parts.

Aliens approach, encroach

In a white Renault fronting

A torment of dust,

As if the end of the world is near.

With the sign of the cross deliver us from evil:

Clear the square and hide in your hovels.

Let the chilled air greet them with whines.

Our best defense is to dissolve into clay

And let a bony whistle of wind

Blow fear across the plaza; and pray

That they turn away without ever

Seeing our faces or knowing our names.

-- CS Cholas

Querétero, México 18, 1997

Descent from Moctezuma

The desert of Sonora

stretched out like a brown floor

below the gray rocks

where we descended

zigzag

down the pale Sierras

in a rusted, red bus

that smelled of diesel and dust.

Nothing

mystical occurred,

just the blur

of passing cacti

around an endless curve

edged ever so close

to the shouts of blue sky.

                           -- C. S. Cholas, April 1986,

                               Sonora, Mexico

El Campo

He holds the rope -- reata, reacts to life

in lassos and los gritos,

mingles with dust, washed down with cervezas.

She wears the shawl -- rebozo,

turquoise color of her village, los indios de la sierras,

reposes with children who run through open doorways

in laughter and sibling screeches of play.

Pride of man and of woman

Hand to hand

The man with cattle:

She with errands in town.

With his black boots, he kicks up the dust

She walks the narrow corridor along adobe walls:

her cheeks veiled in the shawl wrapped in thoughts

of her grandmother who passed away last week

on la finca en los altos at the age of ninety-five

on a day when the wind didn't move

as it liked to do in the folds and bends of the mountainsides.

She winds through the market smells

Of cloth, elote, cilantro and slabs of meat,

Perhaps from cows her man has slaughtered.

Home, now wrapped in sunset, like a shawl,

She handles knives on cebolla y carne,

Prepares to cook

For her man who shakes the corral from his pants

On el rancho where his lasso rests in a barn

Until its swish will slice the air again at dawn.

They sit silently

By the table after fans

Have blown the day's heat into a night

Outside the door where a horseshoe

Hangs crooked above it on a nail.

                                                                        -- C. S. Cholas,

                                                                                    Chihuahua, 23 de abril de 1986

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)

cold morning at two moons lagoon

           

            Most of us huddled near the lagoon

had sweepstakes numbers pending;

            In daybreak's chill, we prayed in hallowed commune,

            our frosted breath ascending,

            for the luck of the fishermen to turn

            as our hunger rose with the sun.

            The campfire blew lonely smoke

            that smelled of burning reeds

            and not fried fish.  We awoke

            aware that breakfast hung on deeds,

            Teeth and words chattered

            but only food mattered.

            The cook emerged from her tent

            bidding everyone to repent

            and end God's curse on the fishermen.

            She tired of standing o'er the empty pan,

            and blew a grey mass of breath in a sigh;

            "I feel heavy on my feet," was her plump reply.

Thank God for the crackers

            that the Carter kids had stuck in their packs.

            We divvied up for breakfast

            what those whiny tots had hid for snacks.

                                    -- Wyoming, 1975