TWO SPANISH POETS:
SALINAS AND HERNANDEZ

The warmth
of your foreign body
in the duende
without maps
on a long journey
from one night city
to a neon boundary
in a cafe at noonday,
a traveler among
the unknown miracles
of mysterious survival,
only street poets
hungry for love,
guided by the sea,
wind and rain may fathom
and you, Pedro Salinas,
promised nothing
by the world,
gave to us your own


MIGUEL'S PASSING
(for Miguel Hernandez, 1910-1942)

Solitude still stains
the prison walls,
and you, Miguel,
wasting away
on sleepless coverlets
untreated for T.B.,
damned only
for burning love songs
and resistance
to a century's wounds
the opens the sun
which trapped you
under lemon trees at noon
in mutable images
only now recovered.