Pablo Maestro - Jana Klenburg

[Larry Robinson]

Pablo Maestro                        


    Neruda 
    justice is your breath
    fearless in knowing
    tattooed by the wind
    love carved in faith
    the poet of poets
    your song completed the world

    I began with the best
    you were the first.
    At eleven I found 
    “Twenty Love Poems
    and One Song Of Despair”.
    Transmuted by the thoughts you think
    with the feelings I felt
    I came to be
    in flight with your flight
    a peace making song of grapes

    Nobel man of Nobel Prize
    Chilean forever
    embracing your wounded land
    fixing its broken mouth
    tending its tragic de-petalled daisies

    You inhabit me
    afire
    your words dialogue 
    with my inner wisdom
    you know of distant sadness
    and in my voice that has humbled itself
    into a homeless poem of exile
    a searing truth lives where God flames.
   Justice finds its place in your hand.
   With each of your words we breathe in freedom
    and breath out pain.

   I was twenty one when
   with Carlos Fuentes,
   at the New York Hilton
   we met in a strange cadence 
   of slow motion.
   Your wife, Matilde, in the background
   looked on accustomed to the routine
   as I sat beguiled at your feet
   amongst many others,
   and in my wiser years as a poet
   I’ve continued at your feet
   still translating into Nerudian
   when I don’t want facts
   to interfere with truth

   Last night, Pablo maestro,
   I slept in the same dream as you
   a merciful atonement
   of making love in a quiet poem
   where in each other’s  exhiles 
   we to one another sang

   When you were dying
   your forever betraying government
   cut off your phone from all the world,
   as the wood fences from all your homes
   bore the packed, scratched tributes
   for the humble for whom you sang
   to the famous that sang for you

   This is a small “song of despair”
   as I wash my face with your tears
   I again know your rhymes
   visionary of hot rhythms
   your drum is my heart beat
   and your voice is my song!

	- Jana Klenburg