by Dan Kelty
I dreamt I was Neruda’s scribe
copying his final poems, the day the black-
shirted soldiers came for him.
Neruda didn’t blink when they arrived.
He just stood up smoothing his jacket and asked
them to excuse his untidy apartment.
I dreamt you were one of them, smiling
wryly beneath your cap and mustache.
I knew that you had dreamed of blood,
wine-dark and redolent, frothing halfway
up your boots. You eat it with your oatmeal,
you swine. Only deep conviction of
one’s own loss can produce such a prodigious
appetite. I’m not proud of you, or
of myself, sitting at the table
in the room now empty, even of shadows
and echoes, while the old man’s
shoes still sit there next to the sofa,
as the smell of gladioli wafts inward
from the garden.
