He stumbled all morning through the market,
drunk and weeping, a young Mayan whose wife
had died. Whenever he encountered people he knew,
he’d stop and wail, waving his arms, and try
to embrace them. Most pushed him away,
or ignored him. He’d stand there like a child,
forlorn, face contorted with grief, lost
in the swarm of the market, the baskets of corn
and peppers, turkeys strung upside down,
the careful pyramids of chicken eggs, women
in their straw hats and rainbow huipiles,
the men smoking cornsilk cigarettes,
meat hanging from the butcher stalls,
(chorizo, pig heads, tripe, black livers),
boys shouting, playing soccer in the courtyard,
the Roman priest, like a thin raven, elbowing
his way through the crowds, rain clouds
swarming from far down the coast, the sun
shattered among the pines on the high ranges,
and weaving through all of it the voices
of women singing over a corpse in an earthen house,
keening a music like distant surf breaking
within the very heart of the mountain.