True Smile

This one came about after I'd been travelling on the Subte, the Buenos Aires underground. I practically live on the Subte midweek and there is a constant stream of beggars, hawkers, buskers, blind beggars, blind buskers, lottery ticket sellers, etc, making their way through the carriages, many of whom are children. One gets to "know" as in recognise most of them. The ones asking for money all speak and many have rather an elaborate spiel. It's hard not to feel irritated by them. I am generally a very intolerant, impatient person and the ones I feel most irked by are the ones with the sob story that goes on and on. It's undoubtedly part of the strategy: If I go on and on and on, they're bound to give me some spare change just to have me shut up and move on. So with all this in mind, I felt quite moved when a woman with AIDS got on and did her thing. She was very genuine and people responded to her realness, giving her change where they hadn't been up until then (Even I gave something). She had a true smile; I'd never seen her before and haven't since.


Death Warmed Me Up

I was on an underground train and Death got on;
the weather had, up to that moment, been indifferent.
It changed when Death got on the train. When Death
got on the train, Death spoke and the chatter, the chug-chug,
the tunnel whistling by, all stopped because Death got on.

What we the chatterers think we know, what we think is
fated, it grabbed us with its power, it located our wounds
when we thought its wounds were greater, it located them
and sucked them out so fast we could hardly catch breath
and the sucking out was warm and the poison was expelled.

Choking up the indifference we were left with something
raw, something real and be it Life or Death or simply dust
is neither here nor there for feel it we could, as one of us.
She was here before us, a face, words in themselves nothing,
heard a thousand times before and in that same context:
In themselves just words and in ourselves we know not what.

She, with her heart and soul and cast-outness was all-seeing
and more genuine than a child and she sucked out the poison,
the wounds in us the same as the wounds in her, may God bless,
may God bless you Sir, Ma'am, they came forth as never before,
rattling change into her box and kind words into her eyes, see:
They heard Death's voice loud and clear, imploring, commanding.