Classic Poem

Certain days wash ashore from the sea
and birds exist that dream of the south.

Possibly my heart flares up with cheer
because it thinks back to that afternoon in Mazatlan,
when we extinguished with booze
the final bonfires of summer.

Even now I recall it under the custard-apple tree
and the river making its sound at my feet.

(Many paths cut through the fields of sugar cane
and the grass was tall and ticklish.)

But days also bring love's weight on their shoulders:
the painful letters, that moment of the war,
and the calendar days wrinkling in the lodgers

(My memory of them is still too wide for my heart.)

I can't forget the black pigeons in New York
and that night when, for ten cents, I went up to see the stars.

But I know of better times,
even better than the gaiety of the snow in Reno,
than the oranges spinning all year in Frisco.

Day after day the peels that sail through time
bring a debt, a sorrow,
a strange sweat that makes one think of travels.