Five Poems (translated from the Spanish by Nicholas Friedman)

My Clown

The demon of my dreams -
laughing through drawn red lips,
teeth whittled down to tips,
eyes black and wild - seems
cheerful and picaresque.
His dancing is grotesque:
back burled into a hunch,
he's dwarflike with a paunch,
flaunting his twisted shape
with bearded mouth agape.
Clown, you laugh at me
through every tragedy -
and dancing, you contrive
your chaos, and come alive.



Proverbs and Songs: I
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