Our next poem was written by Jerry Everett. Jerry lives in Florida.
Ciudad de México
Broad stones contain
Templo Tenochtitlan
Cathedral and Sagrario
The incompasing of mountains
There you steped to count the skulls
Laid out on racks in shining rooms
And so assecc the worthy men
Who hide from our lady of Tepeyac
Los Indio’s of careless art
Who pick up images wherever given
Who sell the flowers of the sun
And persist
The zero’s after their ones
Leave and walk the streets you left
Taking with them tomorrows roses
To redden a frosted dawn
In the one narrow path
North, out of the valley
Walk in peace
Away from the angry city
Red with stones in opposition
GRE – 2008
Re: The poem, some years ago Deborah Green was going down to Mexico City on business. I had gone down to Mexico and Belize with a friend back in 1972 and we had picked up a couple of students from the University of Mexico, in the DF, and they told us about the massacre of 300 students of the University of Mexico in 1968, by the military police. Just before the Olympics. The massacre did not take place in the central historic zocolo of Mexico City, but a smaller zocolo near the University. It changed my view of Mexico. The people there are so nice and decent on average you think they can’t have the problems that the news tells you they do. Still I could not see the stones of a zocolo (every Mexican town has one), but that I would think of the blood of all those people, on those stones. So when Deborah said she was going down to the DF for business, I told her to be careful. I went home and I was thinking of her job as someone who helped to make business negotiations, and of the central square in Mexico city and the giant stones it is made up of from Aztec times, and of Our lady of Guadalupe and the Indians, and the miracle of the roses, and the Spanish cathedral and the chapel there. It was all a bit of a swirl, but on the way home I saw a guy in a light coat in the freezing weather and he had the facial features I know are Mayan. So when I got home I put all that in a poem. What Mexico did poorly it kept, what it did beautifully it sent to us. Those who try to change those things are killed.”
Our celebration of National Poetry month continues throughout April with poems chosen or written by P4P members.
Hi Gerry, what your give is so loving and powerful and tragic and hopeful. Plus the many other words it evokes in the present and in my memory. Your poem, your recollections and the friendship(s) we have and shared and still share for all these years! Thank you Gerry and stay well. June
Thank you June. You all are with me here in Florida. Cant help but think You will keep pushing to develop politics in NY at this time of opportunity and high profile as it has been exposed as so crassly corrupt. Know that I am with you.