Classic Poem

Now I see their faces stamped forever,
with their tape recorder voices over time,
like a hope we do not mention,
like an old book we never read,
or repeating the event mechanically
Lares,
Lares,
Lares,
Like an automatic register,
with its rhythm of gadget and machine gun,
then you tell me,
you scream from your hole of books and papers,
write, damn you, write,
though they've risen from where creatures
rise in the movies
to run back their bodies of dirt and fantasy,
and to see the centuries-long
chant in our eyes,
to see that their blood cannot sleep
and they've risen, Ruscalleda,
they've risen to teach us
you can't defend Lares with words,
or with the motions of a marionette
or a clown,
that Lares means more than stars in the sky,
that it means all the eyes of the dead in time,
and all the hands of love over life,
and you must see why
at this hour
we cannot write,
or dream,
or sing to Lares as if singing to a lover,
because Lares
isn't a tale or a legend,
because we must sing to it with sabotage,
or from a jail,
or buried in the blind birds of death,
which is why, my friend,
this isn't a poem to Lares,
though all the horses in Guasio may whinny
though the whispers may stand up like stones,
though they may call me an anti-poet,
it's just that Lares is a rifle in the hills.