Banknote

Behind profaned walls, calm rituals of exile.

The Brazilian cleaner hums and sponges the table.

A civil quiet between us I will not break

By chanting my gratitude in broken Polish.

She has the courage to be my great-grandfather Ike.

Thanks to his passage a century ahead of hers

I get to sit at the table, I write the check.

To recite this to him through her would be foolish.

Her only language for now is Portuguese,

Though every week she knows more English words.

On the Brazilian equivalent of a dollar bill,

Not only a portrait of Drummond de Andrade

But an entire poem by him: nineteen lines.

It makes the dollar look-Philistine. The poem

Is about a poem he intends to write about

The single diamond made of all our lives.

From gluts, dearths. From markets, forced migrations.

Nossas vidas formam um so diamante.

Sicilian Archimedes could move the universe

If there were a place outside of it to stand.

Locked blind in the diamond, its billion cuts and facets,

Molecules in an obdurate equilibrium

Of pressures, we cannot see the shifting fire.

Words on the banknote; the banknote tints the words.

From Ruth the Moabite, her great-grandson David.

And from Ruth's sister Orpha, Goliath the gentile.

Signature sprayed on steel security shutters

In characters the corrugations disable:

In the unpeace, the breaking of the wards.

The pyramid eye envisions networks of cable,

Gulfs arched, wilderness paved. In the system

Of privilege and deprivation, the employed, the avid:

Fraught in the works, turning the gear of custom.

Copyright World Poetry, Incorporated Jan/Feb 2005
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