Classic Poem

music and painting and all that
That's all they thought of
in Puerto Rico in the old Spanish
days when she was a girl

So that now
she doesn't know what to do
with herself alone
and growing old up here —

Green is green
but the tag ends
of older things, ma chere

must withstand rebuffs
from that which returns
to the beginnings —

Or what? a
clean air, high up, unoffended
by gross odors