This early the garden’ s bare
but people pay to walk it,

at plots of budless brush
stop, as if remembering,

and stoop to mouth the names —
araucaria

araucana, monkey
puzzle tree, something

Japanese — each particular
ridiculous to be.

I. Of Choice
Despair is big with friends I love,
Hydrogen and burning jews.
I give them all the grief I have
But I tell them, friends, I choose, I choose,

Don’ t make me say against my glands
Or how the world has treated me.
Though gay and modest give offense
And people grieve pretentiously,

More than I hoped to do, I do
And more than I deserve I get;
What little I attend, I know
And it argues order more than not.

Constantly risking absurdity
and death
whenever he performs
above the heads
of his audience
the poet like an acrobat
climbs on rime
to a high wire of his own making

On the volatile nights of a winter
nature corroborates with magnanimity
a Cuban is in training for amusement or amnesia,
so often and unfairly assumed as the same,
he brings candy to God, he cultivates the vernacular, he fights off
cirrhosis with fruit poached in syrup, he conducts business;
thus research has shown that The Cuban is resourceful.
In the weighty choreographies of a summer
nature authorizes already with suspicion
a Cuban meets the ocean with offerings and harpoons,
so often and unfairly assumed as the same,