Two Mexican Sonnets

Driving to Puebla

These are the people, horses, houses, farms

That constitute a land of poverty,

The third world, the south, the workers up in arms

Against corruption and the plague of destiny;

Yet among these peasants, painted clowns

Who do pathetic acrobatics, who hawk

Unwanted merchandise, who live in cinder towns

Beside the eternal flame of rubbish, talk

Is mixed with laughing hopes, just like the trees

Inside the courtyard or pastel colors brushed

Into the lava walls; and no one sees

The merchants of despair where goods are pushed

Beneath the sleeping giant, and the police

Behind their plastic shields are quickly hushed.

The Volcano

There it is, at long last, maid

Of strange ambitions, fiery mountain, ash

And lava her accessories, arrayed

Against a harsh environment, a splash

Of something other than Malinche’s face.

That calculating lover of Cortez:

Sprung up in someone’s bean field, not a trace

Before  of steamy temperament, her mes-

Merizing growth touched me before, a boy

Who wanted his own volcano on the grass,

Not like the other, translating conquest’s ploy

For cold ambition, a dream world, a mass.

I only learned of her seductive eyes

When far too old to dream away the maiden’s prize.