Adobo Criollo Sergio Antonio Ortiz Rivera

to reach silence naming what doesn't change I walk in the river of crisis toward the real finding the center of my fear

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everybody has a heartache, blues in the midst of this vastness a drift of plankton 

eternal voices — I wade through life’s tides restraining    the falcon of my mind

silkworms  smuggled out of Tehran ... I fear  this dead end road of doubt 

I have my own goats to tame in the silence of my garden  and a bundle of sorrow I share with my lilies

worried your name is missing— it circles in the shadow-world a wind-blown ghost

shadows prisoners left on the wall — scattered in a mass grave

a prison of sunlight on my skin — wildflowers sing to me, the dust of the dead dances on my tongue

in bad faith— our sun or then again the moon against a flat abyss, a groundless ground

walking through the painted sky — in this prison  I count  and recount bones in the blaze of morning

salamander on the tip of my tongue cocked ready to confront strangled with aphasia 

in my messy room blind men tap their way by inches

In a Japanese Garden a cloud of stars singing about their lives ... ten thousand fingers lead me through a garden at the end of night the slow hours and stone lanterns of a night pool— a symphony some god forgot behind these moss-covered walls is death . . . must I settle into this phantom life   do I know better than God? bamboo shoots and a hand-picked iris … the ikebana in the temple alcove wired into silence

death hiding behind the kitchen walls ... must I settle into being a phantom and not say I know things better than God?

bamboo shoots  and hand-picked iris--  the ikebana   in the front alcove,  wired into silence 

the slow hours and stone lanterns of a night garden— musical symphony that some god forgot

a cloud of stars sang to me about their lives led me with ten thousand fingers to a garden at the end of night

I learn the months by measuring the length of men's shadows in the ponds of your eyes