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To an old poet in Peru.

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I mentioned the names of various
cities, which are pre-Inca,

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pre-Incaic, cultures of coastal
desert Peru, where there

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are many relics which are
found by grave robbers who

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open the sand in the desert
of these necropolises

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and take out the souvenir
pots and skulls, hair.

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Chancay, Pachacamac, Nazca.

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They're all clustered
in around Lima, Peru.

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It's to an old poet in
Peru named Martin Adan, who

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was like an old reprobate
poet, not exactly

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a Maxwell Bodenheim.

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He was a very great
sonneteer, actually.

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Now an old lush who didn't hang
around with the literary crowd,

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but made it in a bar next door
to the presidential palace,

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which was just seized two months
ago by the Peruvian military.

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Because we met at dusk, under
the shadow of the railroad

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station clock, while my
shade was visiting Lima,

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and your ghost was
dying in Lima, old face,

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needing a shave,
and my young beard

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sprouted magnificent as the dead
hair in the sands of Chancay.

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Because I mistakenly
thought you were melancholy,

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saluting your
60-year-old feet, which

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smell of the death of
spiders on the pavement.

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And you saluted my eyes
with your anisetto voice,

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mistakenly thinking I
was genial for a youth.

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My rock and roll is
the motion of an angel

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flying in a modern city.

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Your obscure shuffle is
a motion of a seraphim

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that has lost its wings.

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I kiss you on your fat
cheek once more tomorrow

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under the stupendous
Disaguaderos

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clock before I go to my death
in an airplane crash in North

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America long ago, and you
go to your heart attack

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on an indifferent street
in South America, both

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surrounded by
screaming communists

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with flowers in their ass.

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You, much sooner than
I, or a long night alone

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in a room in the old
hotel of the world,

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watching a black door,
surrounded by scraps of paper.

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Die greatly in thy
solitude, old man.

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I prophesy reward.

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Vaster than the
sands of Pachacamac,

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brighter than a mask
of hammered gold,

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sweeter than the
joy of armies naked,

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fucking on the battlefield.

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Swifter than a time passed
between old Nazca night

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and new Lima in the dark.

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Stranger than our meeting
by the presidential palace

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in an old cafe, ghost of an old
illusion, ghosts of indifferent

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love.

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The dazzling intelligence
migrates from death

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to make a sign of life again
to you, fierce and beautiful

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as a car crash in
the Plaza de Armas.

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I swear that I have
seen that light.

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I will not fail to kiss
your hideous cheek when

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your coffin's closed, and
the human mourners go back

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to their old, tired
dream, and you

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wake in the eye of the
dictator of the universe.

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Oh, another stupid miracle.

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I'm mistaken again.

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Your indifference,
my enthusiasm.

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I insist, you call.

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Lost in the wave of gold that
flows through the cosmos,

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I'm tired of existing,
insisting existence.

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I'm tired of insisting.

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Goodbye.

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I'm going to Pucallpa
to have visions.

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Your clean sonnet?

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I want to read your
dirtiest secret scribbling,

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your hope in his most
obscene magnificence.

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My god.

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[MURMURING]

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[APPLAUSE]

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