George Bradford Patterson II

The Memories of Susi

We spend our afternoons
amid the candy, food, and flower stalls,
surrounding the Central Plaza, meditating
on the golden chimes of bells
that hang inside the tower of the cathedral,
ringing rosy-purple memories
of the missing, reflected
by thick revenants of light
in ambient streams,
embracing this house of peace,
waiting for a silvery silence
to commemorate their eternal scarlet sacrifice,
soaked in centuries of wine-red blood.
We find a dilapidated dark gray bench,
strewn with peals of paint,
ask for cotton candy, peanuts,
and a stick of dripping buttery maize
where a liminal light envelops us,
quivering in silent solitude.

In the dim dank winding cobblestone alleys,
we hear the weeping waterfalls
of echoes of prostitutes and homeless,
crying desperately for attention,
screaming for mercy to spider-like figures
as they point their pistols at them.
We see looming spectral shadows,
pursuing petrified faces,
glazed glistening tender eyes,
beseeching us for succor
with outstretched, straining hands.
In the pale purple twilight
on a glowing old gray-green bench,
scratched with lyrical love letters,
it was the last time
my hands slipped into her pants
with necklaces and beads
shining around her neck like starry red roses,
a silver bell jingling and jangling
lyrics of our love-making
and golden-yellow lanterns
shining on her tearful bronze brown face
with a seraphic brilliance.

As she whispers, I inhale the tendrils of her sighs
and exhale scarlet shadows upon her
that circumfuse us
in our spiraling enrapture
interpenetrating again and again to infinity.

In Santiago, seven years ago
I feel her warm breath
caressing me as I sit on a bright green bench
in the Plaza de Armas.
I eat empanadas,
Inhale her violet shadows
and sing an epithalamion
to consecrate our dream,
to consummate our love.

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