"13.
Spain, from 51 years later, back to 19 years earlier.
Barcelona, cathedral, Sagrada Familiar.
The passion facade gives up its ghost again, Guernica in stone.
Civil War is a bubble on the other side of us.
The whole host cindered, the family gone to scaffold.
The towers throw broken gold persona and excelsis
over the decor.
Mosaics or rosaries, words strung with their blood.
Between words, Antony pieces out medjai, sound matters,
a nativity warm with words.
June.
He's counting towers still unbuilt. 13, Apostles, Mary,
Christ.
In the paupers hospital, St. Barnabas is visiting.
Anthony begins to refuse again.
He won't give up this bed.
But between thought and voice, he already has.
His cathedral, vivid, with all it's still missing.
Sanctus.
14.
Argentina.
Buenos Aires, depression, 2003.
The month is vivid with what it's missing.
Everything has stopped.
Pin balls winter apart from their orbits,
and the guttered dust, the machines.
The Ferris wheel sits its somnolence,
an elaborate chance smoke ring looming me
about the dead food court.
Stranger things have happened outside the middle class squad
to trade trash.
A doctor spews sewage down streets.
A girl begs with gusto tune of a tango.
She can sing.
The sensor apart from the others,
mutilated, ill, according to the mothering.
She's missing an arm or an ear.
All day she's waited with no luck, and only through smokes.
Now, her profile hath lit by the doctors match is regal.
Why not?
The city has a miracle coming, and she expects her share.
Her address is gone, and smoke is a signal, whatever it takes.
15.
United States.
Construction site, Lower Manhattan, 2003.
The address is gone, the world is meaner.
We're a nation away, wandering past the queen
across the harbor who stays with the dead.
In 10 years, five towers will climb over void
will belie their ground.
From here, we fall into the war, wild with terror,
fighting what we cannot see, trading dead for dead.
Homeland, homeland, that veil.
As if each strange ghost gives up
a fleeting silhouette instead of air over this ground,
adding to a song replete.
What is here?
Not the first moment's last evil, written and brass.
Their virtues we write in water which falls upon and from us.
Spring is coming.
When what stays is as vivid as what
is missing, heat or prayer, a force moving
silence about to sing."
If you would please join me in thanking and celebrating
John Bolstron and Melissa Fitch for their beautiful tango
performance.
[APPLAUSE]