The Day of the Dead

Don Julio receives in a violence of roses;
The sun to him is stained with jacaranda,
A purple flush on the jowls of an emperor.

(Outside his flaking wall the street is a street
Of walls, and the guests of don Julio wait
In the shadow while the maid prevaricates
Obscurely in a clutter of bougainvillea
And clay tureens. Unlike the Baroque interior,
A façade turned inward, a sham colonnade
For the living, don Julio lurks behind his eyes
Like the true Indian, saving an ambuscade
Of flowers for the intruder.)

Don Julio receives in a violence of roses:
Don Julio born is wrapped in don Julio dead;
Don Julio’s king is a flame, and his throne is ashes.

But stroll with him where his cathedral raises
Gothic fingers to the same fat king
Who beams coequally on too many roses
And too many angels wound in stone acanthus.

(Today we eat bread in the shape of the dead and candy
Skulls with our names, and lunch in the cemetery,
While the dead in don Julio’s room sip at the amber
Mezcal he has left for them, and pull at the cigars
Over the last of their dinner.)

It is for Julio ‘a reasonable ambition’
To be amusing on a tombstone, or to scatter
His pomp with petals where the bishops bring
Wafers and wine to sup with the son of a king.