I watched clouds break, crumble and scatter
like Baudelaire’s clouds would never do.*

Baudelaire said**

~I love the clouds…the passing clouds…up there…up there…the marvelous clouds!

Grey ones afar and white ones near, clouds can rupture
this is how literature is made
any day in Ecuador, or anywhere else.
Poetry is not innocent.

You ‘d better get used to it
Bolaño said
An individual is no match for history

I ask how things were in his Chilean land
but he does not answer.
He died in Barcelona

I try not to digress to homemade Snickers
and gooey caramel sweets in marvelous clouds

You ‘d better get used to it
Bolaño said

When the sounds of black insects and worms
whisper an unfamiliar syllabus to the poet exposed
to bright sunlight at noon
it brings Nothing
Only dry bones in the yard
unattended by the white dog

I can string cloud words
together in slender sadness
in exchange of choked

roots of the willow
Beware, a tree in winter may
Fall

*By Night in Chile
** The Stranger