Time to choose, he mumbles—as if anointed
and charged. Drinks a pale ale from a can—
nothing noble or heroic, he fears—yet knows
his history. What will you do when they start
loading people into boxcars, he once asked
a class of young minds. That can never happen
here—the arrogance of the blind, the poet says loud
enough for the important people to hear him.
A lips only smirk from the provost who admittedly
never understood metaphor.
Look around, Neruda says to the soldiers, merchants
of death, searching his house. Look around—nothing
but poetry. Nothing but verse. The world seems still
to him now, as if waiting for the next word
to be uttered.
The now of it, the smell of biscuits rising
on a cold morning in December, people busily
heading for work, the laughter of children playing
on the slide and swings before school, the ringing
of a distant bell.
There are men, Eliot’s stuffed men, hollow men,
who would reduce the playground to rubble.
from García Lorca Is Somewhere in Produce