One Christmas season, I was on an Indian reservation,
with a relative who tries to help Indians out.
And in this little trip, he was bringing them candy.
Or other words, he was getting an order,
trying to find out how much candy it
would take so each child on the reservation
would have at least one bag of candy.
And I went along with him.
Some of the details, obviously, have been changed.
But at any rate, I was quite impressed by getting
this insider's view.
It's called "Poem For Leonardo Sanchez".
"Where had the cock gone?
The golden one crowing himself away above your garden.
A frozen mist dissolving to the drawn out death of many dawns.
And but for the old braves creeping out with wooden rifles
from the burnt over hamburger stand,
and the white slave girls kept as a burden,
your village was a 200-year-old crepuscular rose.
The church dark enough to swallow them,
and the yard in front for playing bolas.
Especially the lads who had nailed themselves
up to display their sinews for the girls.
You came down the steps, still emboldened by the night
before, and tucking your tail in.
It would take a new lift, a new aluminum chair,
and 1,000 pounds of candy.
Drove us around to those who had need.
But the pregnant women never stumbled from our arms
toward the fury of a demon.
The church neither gasped flame nor sucked them in.
He eyed the corn on their breasts,
but remained a stone on my ribs.
Leonardo, the steps of your house are rotting in.
And though we can lift your son, perhaps assuage these children.
They swing so far on our intricate devices
that soon the blood your fathers tasted
as pride and musk of the wolf will be phlegm in your throat.
The streets where the girls roll,
full of prayers and drunken, where we fornicate
will no longer be grim".