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This poem is taken from PN Review 35, Volume 10 Number 3, January - February 1984.

Poems Charles Tomlinson

VALLE DE OAXACA

for Roberto Donis

Trumpeters
from the Comandancia militar
in the last glare of day
are practising a fanfare:

their notes float off
buffeted by walls
into a shower of chromatics
that falls round the ears of the women at the washing trough:

a celebration? You might call it that
as it harmonises with the tones
that toll from Santo Domingo -
a celebration, but of what?

Oh it's a desultory enough affair
I know: perhaps little more
...


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