I saw the aurora lights in your eyes
Fresh streams and salty tides
I tasted strawberry fields in your lips
The sweet tongue of coconut as it splits
I swayed the tepid summer grass along your spine,
Gliding leaf petals in your hair, as we sat in the strong branches of this Ponderosa Pine

The place where I now go alone to ponder of you
Today, my vision only grows blurry, as it crowds with a deep population of blue,
The heaviness on my heart of a lighter branch almost spoils this beautiful view,
However, I can trust that this tree will never run from me,
It will stay rooted as promised; it will remain much longer than you

Stomped earth with broad feet
Fastening fresh saplings into
Whole forests
Eight feet by eight feet, the grid
Through winter month's
To early spring
Line of tree planters, twenty
Sometimes less, sometimes more
On Shasta, on Lassen, on Trinity Alps
Douglas Firs and Ponderosa Pines
In Mendocino, in Eureka
Planting baby giants, Redwoods
Sequoias in Sequoia National and Klamath
Young men with ***-dads
Knew some old ones too
Women as well, though few
If you could bear the snow, the rain
If you could bear back-breaking pain
The glory is yours
As was once mine
Reforestation
Go plant your line
To be eternally in
Mother Nature's good graces
And kinship known by campfire

The assassins hit in 63
And Camelot was gone,
Inspiration vanished
And the darkness sang it’s song.
Vietnam escalated
Brezhnev’s Russia loomed,
Africa was eviscerated
And Red China entombed.
Floating on a long white cloud
The Kiwis were replete
With abundant British markets
For their butter, wool and meat.
The Europeans went ****
And Britain lost it’s way
When the Beatles and the Rolling Stones
Monopolized their day.
Man landed on the moon
And raised the Yankee flag
And they shot Mahatma Ghandi
For making good things out of bad.
The Berlin Wall dividing,
The Cold War tense and spare,
ICBM’s threaten silently
In their silos of despair.
Bob Menzies ruled Australia
As an amassing of his loot
And his White Australia Policy
Condemned him as a brute.
Found naked on her tousled bed,
Blonde hair across her face,
Marylin Monroe is dead
The world’s a darker place.
In the Age of Aquarius
Our children lost their youth,
LSD and smoking ***
And Afro’s were the proof.
Lots of leg in miniskirts,
High bouffant’s in the hair,
Screaming teeny boppers
Rock with Elvis on “the Air”.
Giant, Rawhide, Ponderosa,
Martin Luther King,
Kaftans and a cheese fondue,
Abortion is a sin!

It’s a sixties kaleidoscope,
A panoramic skim
Of an era of wonderment
Which you and I lived in.


Marshalg
@the Gate
Mangere Bridge
20th January 2009

In the deep of time indigenous tribes
surfaced a red earth with protruding plateaus
and burnt canyons along the Cimarron River.
The ancient Anasazi settled
at the core of this mesa.
Scattered ponderosa pine.
Yet, their sudden demise echoed curiosity.

Navajo sensed a struggle of two infinite worlds,
a quivering inundation.
Circling its haunted ominous shape,
a skull with one eye, the apparition of light
rose into a blue desert sky.

Violent storms crackle hot lightning
strikes in a sulfurous summer-
an oracular hothouse.
Navajo talk of spirits or the gateway
to fire. Heaps of iron and lodestone
lodged in the cap. Only two
brazen, cat totem poles guarding its passage.

Standing among the mesa
to feel the verve of the earth.
A New Mexico sun beats down
burning the drowsed terrain.
To see the legendary shaman glow
in his ephemeral blue nimbus.
Bathed in gaudy turquoise.

Sensing the dark encroachment
of a ghost. Near the bony hills, soared
a turbulent black bird in full flight,
upward.

you came to the rodeo
with your latest portfolio
of sidekick apparatchi(c)ks

colorful lily - a realpolitik mariposa
and gloriosa - tall like a ponderosa
while i rode the appaloosa-
cool like - little joe

do they make you hum
a sweet song like i do?

sitting on your spanish saddle
booted to skeedaddle
when i beat the buzzer
while buzzards circled-
beneath a purple sun

you came that time
when i rode
-on the blue mesa.

r ~ 9/24/14

When Peg laughs like Liz
deep woman-hearted laugh
eating beef jerky on Mesa Verde

the good hearts and smarts of women
come back to me, not guessing
any better than they at the time what love

meant, leaving them behind in sandstone time
going to my own cement, sandstone
or good mountain grave

having seen the sharp-shinned and sparrow
hawk flying and at rest, not at peace,
seeking prey from a ponderosa snag.

I left my woman behind to float
alone down the long canyon for feathers
and signs, she's making camp

the moon half full, the sun half high
sky full of planets birds and stars
I look up from the rocks

elements
housekeeping, thinking
love that's learned to love

from earlier loves
laughs remembered, heard
in the laugh of the woman who is my wife.

Pretty, pretty Ponderosa
~butterfly dreaming
pretty much like a Lion
indoors sleeping
Pretty, says pretty girl,
Whatever do you mean?
Pretty women much prefer
Exquisite Angel Queen

Pretty cool, pretty soon
Autumn comes a'rollin'
Pretty much like fresh of breath
first thing in th'mornin

Pretty Sun, first of light
after hot and heavy night
Lush of Love, howling Moon
Rush of touch in my room
Precious one, Yes You,~my One
Please let me love you more
than pretty much any other
ever has before

Pretty, pretty Ponderosa
Will never let this end
...but tell me baby, tell me
*Will I ever love again?

Although I hardly gave it a thought
I didn't really doubt
our miniature juniper, a bonsai,
would survive our desert vacation.
                                                       ­   It likes the dry
air of our home, needs water
once a week at most and seems
meditative and active, both. While away
I rediscovered my love of agaves -
                                                          sotol­ and century
plant - met Mortonia and became
reacquainted with squawbush, its citrus
drupe which makes traveling the long horizon
of the desert uplands endurable.
                                                      ­    Live oaks - emory,
wavyleaf - dominant and regally spaced
giving ground to mesquite only on the sere
sand flats. I counted and drew inflorescenses,
spikelets, florets, awns but grasses
                                                         ­  remain a mystery
their microscopic parts. This year
I'll study, give them serious thought before
our Spring starts. The cactus wren was the one
bird I could be certain about. Sunsets
                                                         ­  made me sorry
the desert is not my home. But the ocotilloes
flowered before we left and that made up
for the vicious attack of a hedgehog cactus.
Impressive, ponderosa pine and Arizona cypress
                                                         ­  the canyon canopy
watered with snowmelt and along the high cliffs
limestone formations predating our arrival by
ten million years of weather. Newspapers
kept us aware humanity had not accomplished yet
                                                           the end of history
and that was fair. The planes were full of citizens
who no longer applaud upon landing. Snow flew,
not a pinyon pine or manzanita within two moons
walking. On the dining room sideboard, waiting,
                                                        ­   our miniature juniper.

The cry of an eagle floats across a distant peak
  bear tracks visible in the spring thawing snow

Sunlight, spreading its dance upon the land
  the Ponderosa Pine and Aspen in bloom

The glaciers look down smiling the higher you climb
  searching for that redemption never offered below

The wolf trails the hare back inside its snowy den
  the road to all new entry having now been cleared

Permission never asked for, granted, as the music starts
  it’s early May in the Rockies—the January of renewal

In a celebration of new life, flowers wrap the landscape like ribbon
  tying close the promises like good wishes on a Christmas morning

It’s springtime even on the highest peak, and old questions lost of meaning now seem gone away...

Until reborn in the arrival of yet another desperate beginning
  —holding nothing back

(Columbia Falls, Montana: September, 2003)

Aspen, ponderosa pine, blue spruce
pink glacier-cut rock, scree, ravens
gray jay, peregrine falcon, hawk.

We climb to 11,000 feet in three days,
camp at Lawn Lake for three days. Alpine
tundra. Elk, bighorn sheep, marmot.

Tileston Meadows, ticks in grass,
rock face of Mummy Mountain.
Binoculars show pink cracks in gray rock.

Stoke gas stoves, play cards.
Boil water, set up tarps, lay out
sleeping bags, hang bear bag.

Watch crescent moon slice into
Fairchild Mountain. Moonlight
makes a mosque of the rocks.

Yellow aspen splash in dark green
spruce and pine. Gullies where streams
slash during spring snowmelt.

One rock, feather or flower worth
more than money. Need no wallet,
keys. Just clothes for fur.

All day climb toward saddle to see
what's on other side. One hawk floating
among bare peaks and over valleys.

Wind at 13,000 feet
turns to sleet. Turn back from peak,
take boulders two at a time down.

Winter moves into mountains.
Then we fly from Denver to New York
where it's still summer.

The Grand Canyon is like the brain
with deep, unexplored fissures and tributaries,
the main route well known by now.

I am walking, walking inside my mind,
a grand canyon, a planet of canyons, a system
of planets. The exploration may become dangerous

I might lose my job, forgetting to go or losing
sight of its importance. But the job is gathering
pinyon nuts and saguaro fruits, it is the main

river, deepest cavity, how I find the unexplored
canyons and tributaries of my neighbors
and my enemies. But is it a religion,

a reason for living. It is a marriage, for better
or worse, with all the other living. The concept
of life's brevity, temporary compared

with the time taken to carve the canyon, does
not interest me. Each moment has a weather,
is a mirror of all other moments. The naming

of things goes on. Cliff rose and wavyleaf oak,
new mexican locust and sagebrush among ponderosa
and pinyon pine, juniper. Once I know

who they are inhabiting the canyon, the raven's
flight is meaningful. The raven's rock cave,
search for seed and carrion, my home and job.

(From My Novel 'Searching For Crazy Horse': Published 2011)

         Columbia Falls, Montana- September, 2003


The cry of an eagle floats across a distant peak
  bear tracks visible in the spring thawing snow

Sunlight, spreading its dance upon the land
  the Ponderosa Pine and Aspen all in bloom

The glaciers look down smiling the higher you climb
  searching for that redemption never offered below

The wolf trails the hare back inside its snowy den
  the road to all new entry having now been cleared

Permission never asked for, granted, as the music starts
  it’s early May in the Rockies—the January of renewal

In a celebration of new life, flowers wrap the landscape like ribbon,
  tying close the promises like good wishes on a Christmas morning

It’s springtime even on the highest peak, and old questions lost of meaning
  now seem gone away...

Until reborn in the arrival of yet another desperate beginning,
  —holding nothing back

In a painted sky upon a summer day
or in the darkness of a ponderosa grove
in a barren river bed where at rest I lay
in a stony cave, that secluded alcove

Something there is hiding from my sight
something bright which is to me most dear
which shines with an unending effervescent light
and in the endless night it whispers in my ear

Whether it be in the woods, or in some desert bare
or in some other place I haven't thought to look
I know someday I share behold it shining there
and capture it between the pages of a book.

“Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room.   Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America—not on the battlefields of Vietnam.”                              Marshall McLuhan

You understand where I'm coming from,
Reader Rabbit, you twisted ****? Maybe not;
While you and your boy/girlfriend, later your wife/husband,
Were ******* backpacks around Europe,
I was of a less fortunate, less frivolous cohort,
Like the poor, who always miss the fun stuff.
So I stayed home and waited, dreading time,
Treading water in Queens,
Doing the graveyard shift at the Wonder Bread Bakery in Jamaica,
(No, not that Jamaica, mun.)
Building bodies 12 ways, and sweating out the inevitable,
Praying to my lesser god not to hear from my local draft board.
And who was I to disturb the universe?
“It ain’t me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son;
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, lawd naw.”
(Send  "Fortunate Son" Ringtone to your Cell)  
I was just another cynical working-class hero,
Unlike you, numb nuts, and the rest of your silver surfer friends.
I knew I’d wind up without my teddy bear,
Convinced I’d end up sans security blanket,
With no ****-vacant musical chair,
To plop my sorry non-exempt, 1A **** cheeks
Down into when the music stopped,
When the music’s over, turn out the light--Jim Morrison,
Lizard King--turn out the light.
My horse, my horse . . . no wait . . . **** the horse . . .
My kingdom, my kingdom for a 2-S college deferment!
What kingdom?  
What was it Jesus said?
Not of this earth, anyway.
Colonial Indochina: rich man's war, poor man's fight;
It was such an efficient way to rid trash from poor neighborhoods.

Needless to say, I’ve been having a little trouble adjusting ever since,
Since I got back from that Kafkaesque Disneyland Jungle Cruise,
My personal Cold War thriller,
My Tecumseh Sherman “War is All Hell” war,
My war: 45 years ago next week.
These things take time:
So says the recorded message on the VA’s PTSD Hotline.
45 years ago I packed up my duffle,
Packed for what I thought was going to be my last time in uniform,
Grabbed my Army discharge papers, and
Limp-dicked out the side door of,
The Veterans Hospital in St. Albans, County of Queens.
I’d like to say I never looked back. But I’d be lying.

(cue PSA: VA Reaches Out to Veterans:
The Department of Veterans Affairs will begin,
Contacting nearly 570,000 recent combat veterans May 1,
To ensure they know about VA's medical services and other benefits.)

Today and every day is 11-11, Veterans Day—
What gets me now is that all my time since The Nam,
Is on average two lifetimes,
For all those sent home, bagged and tagged.
Is it survivor’s guilt? I doubt it.

You may not understand this, but I miss that freaky jungle.
I felt safe there.
How quickly I learned to expect the unexpected,
And that meant to expect the worse,
Finding my comfort zone the more uncomfortable, the worse it got.
I miss the wet weight of the air,
The cloying heat and humidity.
Humidity: a plain and simple meteorological miracle,
When you have plenty of time to really think about it,
Which I did: 365 days and a wake-up.
You know that whole gorgeous hydrologic cycle thing?
I miss the rain, the sound of falling rain.
I miss the other sounds, every buzz and click,
All the arcane and dismal things that go screech in the night.
And that relentless insect hum,
The jungle vibrating and intense,
The colors vibrating too, especially that electric green,
A green so vivid, every leaf and vine,
"The world's richest repository of terrestrial biodiversity,” I read in some nature magazine,
Lying naked in bed while my therapist ****** me off the other day.
All those freaky creatures great and small,
Every miraculous living thing that’s really alive and thriving.
And this is why--I think,
Getting obnoxiously philosophical for the moment,
This explains why it got to be so easy to waste what was alive and thriving over there, including and especially our selves.

Death never seemed that permanent, that final over there.
And besides, you couldn’t **** anything for that long,
The critters all looking their wet and slimy same.  
Two minutes in The **** and you were
Killing every ******* gnat and bug,
Every leech and snake, anything &
Anyone that just looked at you sideways.

And the flora? Did I mention the flora?
Soupy Sales: (Smack! Bam!)  “I told you not to mention that.”
The flora:  the plants grew back and they grew back quick.
You chop a path on recon and the next day it’s not there anymore,
So you chop the whole way back to the L-Z.  
Chop, chop, Hop Sing!
You were one smart ****, Hop Sing,
Safe and sound in Lake Tahoe, Nevada-side,
Cooking up Ponderosa pork bellies for,
The Cartwright Clan: Ben, Adam, Hoss & Little Joe.
Meanwhile, I’m not earning any frequent flyer miles,
Aboard a chartered TWA, coffee-tea-or-me,
Royal **** airplane to Saigon,
A place called ** Chi Minh City today.
I remember looking around at the faces on that airplane,
As we landed at Tan Son Nhut,
Those forlorn godforsaken faces,
Black and Chicano and poor white trash boys.
Scared shitless, of course,
But we really were jolly green giants over there,
American conquistadors, Cortez and the Boys,
Seeking gold and glory and, of course,
*******, (www.urbandictionary.com):
That sweet wet hole we all crave,
Can't go for too long without,
Center of our life's desire,
What gives women the upper hand in almost every situation,
Except when you pay in South Vietnamese piastres,
Your basic exchange rate $3.00 *******.

Yes, we were American conquistadors,
But traveling light this trip,
Our black-robed Jesuit fathers having missed the flight.
That’s right, for us no Ad majorem Dei gloriam this time,
Our mission so simple and so clear:
SEARCH & DESTROY.
But mostly, Destroy.

And pretty soon you worked your way up the evolutionary ladder,
From bugs, to fish, to frogs and snakes,
Small varmints and reptiles, birds and rodents;
And by the time you taxonomy out to the runway,
You’re pretty much whacking anything that moves,
Anything you feel like, pretty much any time,
All the time, sometimes just to pass the time,
Just to break up the ******* monotony of it all.
So making the anti-personnel leap got sort of easy:
They all looked the same, didn’t they?
They all wore the same pajamas,
And it was never conducive to grunt longevity,
To nitpick the civilians from the soldiers,
Never a good idea to waste time distinguishing friend from foe.

Good Morning, Vietnam:
We really were nerve-gassed-Adrian Cronauers over there,
G-2 Army oxymoronic intelligence stiffs,
Having a little difficulty finding the enemy,
Having one hell of a time finding a Vietnamese man named "Charlie."
They're all named Nguyen, or Tran, or Thanh or Trong or Bao or Phuc . . .
Oh, ****, I get it now.
I grok the how and why,
Of all the names we’ve used for centuries to dehumanize the enemy:
***** and Nips, Chinks and Slopes,
Huns and Krauts, Redskins and Ivans,
Redcoats and Rebs, Zulus and Mau Maus, *****, Ragheads and Sand ******* . . .
To dehumanize is to be dehumanized.
Nominal dehumanization; linguistic trickery.
It made it easy . . .
Well, easier . . .
To **** you.

What was it Pope Innocent III’s legate advised?
“**** Them All.  Let God sort ‘em out.”

Is it smell of burning flesh that makes me so digress?

Yes, I miss that freaky jungle, my friend.
I miss knowing what to expect and what was to be expected.
And most of all I miss that absolute confidence,
My self-liberating soporific certainty,
That I did not give a **** whether I lived or died,
And no one else did either.
I miss the peaceful place to go,
Coping with fear by letting go,
By writing off my life,
My future "in-country,"
My 12-month tour of duty,
My 365 T.S. Eliot Ash Wednesdays,
Learning to care and not to care,
Cultivating indifference as to,
Whether or not I ever made it Wee, Wee, Wee,
All the way home again.
The answers were right there,
Always there, all the time,
In nursery rhymes, and counting songs,
In psalms and arias, and every blues and rock lyric,
Right there, so right ******* there,
In Kris Kristofferson/Janice Joplin parlance of the times:
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”

And life for me since then--
ONE BIG, FAT-TITTED INCOMPREHENSIBILITY!

What was that Walter Sobjak in The Big Lebowski said?

“This is not 'Nam.
This is bowling.
There are rules.”

And instead of falling in love with people, I fell in love with hundred year old ponderosa trees and atoms unharmed by human breath

Affluent men taketh and foreclose thy dormitory residence
They smirk and grin with their polka dotted ties
They loveth to giveth pain
They laugh to poor man's suicide
They build skyscraper's to thy sky
Metal steel to beam star high
Animal's tis they hunt as trophie's
Whilst African and even American babies art choking
From no food nor water!!!!!!!
They drop acidic gas for slaughter
Whilst putting chemical's in the turf
Slug round's to virginal church
They've scoffed high Jehovah
Made **** their Ponderosa
Wriggling worms
Master artists of DEATH
Selleth thy soul to the world dear reader
And thou shalt taketh thy last breathe
For they've madeth man focus on media ****
****** thee by breast's
They Maketh women a harlot *****
They telleth them what they should be
Giveth them fifty bucks
For girly magazines
But these art the Queen's
That the howler's corrupted their image
Man of no humbling
Devilish scrimmage
As he also maketh men
Robots to his illusion
Giveth him archery
They calleth them soldier brainwashed timid's
They run ourn own weather
( DARPA) run by the government beast
Stick poles in the ground
(Search it in Alaska) thou shalt seeith
Mankind thinks this weather is natural
As natural they tryeth to be
Disillusioned by fact's soon
Their chapter shalt be seen
Their heads will be bowed
Tasting the ash
Their law's of soo called justice
Kiss mine ***!!!
No I don't cuss ( not a cusser honest)
But I'm overboard now
Sick of the molestation of ourn being's, creature's, And GLOBE overflowed!!!!
The blinded eyes
Are woozy by robes
But guess what dearest?
Almost the end of the show.......

The cry of an eagle floats across a distant peak
  bear tracks visible in the spring thawing snow

Sunlight, spreading its dance upon the land
  the Ponderosa Pine and Aspen all in bloom

The glaciers look down smiling, the higher you climb
  searching for that redemption never offered below

The wolf trails the hare back inside its snowy den
  the road to all new entry having now been cleared

Permission never asked for, granted, as the music starts
  it’s early May in the Rockies—the January of renewal

In a celebration of new life, flowers wrap the landscape like ribbon, tying close the promises like good wishes on a Christmas morning

It’s springtime even on the highest peak, and old questions lost of meaning now seem gone away...

Until reborn in the arrival of yet another desperate beginning,
—holding nothing back

Columbia Falls Montana: June, 2011)

This doodling Yankee (boot noah dandy)
doth newt lack chutzpah,
tries to finagle Fitbit fitting figurative footwear,
that ideally Fitzhugh
like custom made glove snugly,
terrifically, unequivocally matching,
thence handily solving Finger hut issue,
when or if arctic blasts cold
doggedly enveloped Gaea,
whence  humans analogously held hostage
linkedin among fellow Earthlings freezing,
frost bitten, gangrenous hominids
scurrying haphazardly searching vainly
from shelter ring sky (with mother's little helper)
each primate scrambling

(as unrepentant, recalcitrant outlier)
once (what seems millenniums ago) livingsocial
jackknifed habitat fractured,
essentially damning Crispr bungled ambition
grist for raconteur spewing sought aide
telling tales amidst the mill by  Ponderosa Pine
drawing a crowd of curious onlookers,
who forewent idling away time structured existence,
thus, nary a clock watcher weathering whims
as mother nature doth channel
capriciously, felicitously,

and indubitably stripped away
bow ring pastime asper watching paint dry
now tis each man, woman and child to
(seeketh dale and hill) to duff fend themselves
whereat mortality will steal immoral majority linkedin
encapsulated, housed, kindled
within luxurious faux existence
capitalistic dreams engendered existence fleeced
devoid of featherbed,

indeed mollycoddled memories
yanked wherein current rank and file
endowing superlative creature comforts
reduce wretched survivors
scant band of bare naked ladies
beastie boys, foo fighters espying counting crows
ready to buzzfeed toe kin **** sapiens

bereft, expunged, faux invincibility kickstarting
learning basic survival skills
forced to rescind twenty first century trappings
shifting paradigm sans primacy
pitting dishabille helpless imps against pearl jam killers
who do not shrink from ethically principled,

but give full reign to selfish callous deleterious foibles,
gruesome harmful indiscretions
sprouting with mushroom rhizome rapidity
ousting the  omnipresently
(well nigh since time immemorial
virtues cultivated, futilely integrated, lending oomph
residentially, scientifically tendering ubiquitous DNA
foisting gabled, heralded, instilled,

justified kneaded love thy neighbor motto
lyft ting in one fell swoop delicately
embroidered, finely graven, heavenly ideals
no more patent leather shoes reflecting up
nor doodling Yankee staking claim to fame
via feathered cap made of macaroni
thus such jingoistic, holistic,
fabric ripped retroactively
ramping atavistic simian base,
thus leveling the playing field.

Cuando allá dicen unos
Que mis versos nacieron
De la separación y la nostalgia
Por la que fue mi tierra,
¿Sólo la más remota oyen entre mis voces?
Hablan en el poeta voces varias:
Escuchemos su coro concertado,
Adonde la creída dominante
Es tan sólo una voz entre las otras.

Lo que el espíritu del hombre
Ganó para el espíritu del hombre
A través de los siglos,
Es patrimonio nuestro y es herencia
De los hombres futuros.
Al tolerar que nos lo nieguen
y secuestren, el hombre entonces baja,
¿Y cuánto?, en esa dura escala
Que desde el animal llega hasta el hombre.

Así ocurre en tu tierra, la tierra de los muertos,
Adonde ahora todo nace muerto,
Vive muerto y muere muerto;
Pertinaz pesadilla: procesión ponderosa
Con restaurados restos y reliquias,
A la que dan escolta hábitos y uniformes,
En medio del silencio: todos mudos,
Desolados del desorden endémico
Que el temor, sin domarlo, así doblega.

La vida siempre obtiene
Revancha contra quienes la negaron:
La historia de mi tierra fue actuada
Por enemigos enconados de la vida.
El daño no es de ayer, ni tampoco de ahora,
Sino de siempre. Por eso es hoy.
La existencia española, llegada al paroxismo,
Estúpida y cruel como su fiesta de los toros.

Un pueblo sin razón, adoctrinado desde antiguo
En creer que la razón de soberbia adolece
y ante el cual se grita impune:
Muera la inteligencia, predestinado estaba
A acabar adorando las cadenas
y que ese culto obsceno le trajese
.Adonde hoy le vemos: en cadenas,
Sin alegría, libertad ni pensamiento.

Si yo soy español, lo soy
A la manera de aquellos que no pueden
Ser otra cosa: y entre todas las cargas
Que, al nacer yo, el destino pusiera
Sobre mí, ha sido ésa la más dura.
No he cambiado de tierra,
Porque no es posible a quien su lengua une,
Hasta la muerte, al menester de poesía.

La poesía habla en nosotros
La misma lengua con que hablaron antes,
y mucho antes de nacer nosotros,
Las gentes en que hallara raíz nuestra existencia;
No es el poeta sólo quien ahí habla,
Sino las bocas mudas de los suyos
A quienes él da voz y les libera.

¿Puede cambiarse eso? Poeta alguno
Su tradición escoge, ni su tierra,
Ni tampoco su lengua; él las sirve,
Fielmente si es posible.
Mas la fidelidad más alta
Es para su conciencia; y yo a ésa sirvo
Pues, sirviéndola, así a la poesía
Al mismo tiempo sirvo.

Soy español sin ganas
Que vive como puede bien lejos de su tierra
Sin pesar ni nostalgia. He aprendido
El oficio de hombre duramente,
Por eso en él puse mi fe. Tanto que prefiero
No volver a una tierra cuya fe, si una tiene, dejó de ser la
mía, Cuyas maneras
rara vez me fueron propias,
Cuyo recuerdo tan hostil se me ha vuelto
y de la cual ausencia y tiempo me extrañaron.

No hablo para quienes una burla del destino
Compatriotas míos hiciera, sino que hablo a solas
(Quien habla a solas espera hablar a Dios un día)
O para aquellos pocos que me escuchen
Con bien dispuesto entendimiento.
Aquellos que como yo respeten
El albedrío libre humano
Disponiendo la vida que hoy es nuestra,
Diciendo el pensamiento al que alimenta nuestra vida.

¿Qué herencia sino ésa recibimos?
¿Qué herencia sino ésa dejaremos?

Winds howl through stricken streams,
From the moonshined mountains spiking Tennessee.
Steaming copper pipes protect like turpentine,
Cherish the soil from vine to wine.

Sweetwater medicine crosses Big Sky Country lines,
And a Capitol drowns voice's reedy rhynes.
The Carolines and swamps round' New Orleans,
Spokane's foothills spire like Woodland's Cherokees.

Mushroom clouds swooped ponderosa pines,
In the desert one day, made the earth cry.

Oh Beautiful, not time to flee,
The Jersey Wetlands or Houston's calamity,
Analogous feats, magnetic societies, 
Build a bridge across contrary beliefs. 

_trf

Plant yourself around those who help you grow taller, avoid dodder vines and inconspicuous maulers.