Well, back in the cities, so to speak,
this is a poem called Midpoint.
And it's about-- well, it started being a poem about
cities--
I wanted to write about the cities where I lived.
And the kind of things that I was
writing about different cities, always the same thing.
I mean, it was basically the same kind of thing
that I was loving, regretting in each city.
And I cut it down drastically to kind of algebra
where there are really basically only two places,
A and B. It's one of those formulations almost
like 19th century novels.
Where they say, somebody, an S married to P had a son
G, that kind of thing.
So this is down to A and B. So if you hear it, you only
hear A and B, that's like a little algebra.
And it's called Midpoint.
No sooner had I left A than I started doubting its existence.
Its streets and noisy crowds.
Its famous all night cafes and prisons.
It was dinnertime.
The bakeries were closing.
Their shelves empty and white with flour.
The grocers were loading their iron grills.
A lovely young woman was buying the last cassava melon.
Even the back alley where I was born blurs, dims.
O rooftops!
Armadas of bed sheets and shirts in the blustery crimson dusk.
B, at which I'm destined to arrive by and by,
doesn't exist now.
Hurriedly, they're building it for my arrival.
And on that day, it will be ready.
Its streets and noisy crowds.
Even the schoolhouse where I first
forged my father's signature, knowing
that on the day of my departure it will vanish forever
just as A did.