An old Mapuche, head bent 
against biting breezes,
drives his last goats uphill,
not bothering to shut
slatted doors of his adobe hut.
There’s nothing left
for prowlers to scent.

Rumble of stones breaks his solitude: 
an elegy of un-love echoes through canyons.
When evening glooms icy paths on slopes, 
he’ll be a shadow of shades
in the glimmer of wasted moons -
maybe some salted meat
will warm his aching guts.

The rugged Mapuche, 
a sack full of salt, 
weeps crystal tears on ancient dawns.
His face, a mistrustful grimace, 
lips sealed by spectral images
of endless betrayal.
Vain hope and rituals
prevail in his muted soul.

Pilgrim of hoarfrost gendered in glaciers, 
he believes in spirits of trees and snow.
There’s no heart that dreams him
nor is there a love in his memory.

Mother Moon, Father Sun, 
dormant volcanic gods
and scrubby Patagonian steppes
feast his timeless eye.

I exist as dubious matter:
perhaps a bacteria in guts of a volcano,
a bacillus infernus generating sulphur and iron.
Ignorant of scientific paradigms,
I’m a stubborn microbe colonising
underbellies of continental icecaps.
Last night I dreamed that I scurried
through oil-ducts dented by rust,
today, I fed on copper in black
cables criss crossing urban skies.
I may be infinitely small,
spied under the microscope
of an obscure apprentice
or conjectured in biochemical formulas.
Maybe a wiggle in viscera of throbbing bodies,
exiled from human murmurings.
No poem evokes me,
no passion exalts me,
no melodies sing in my ears.
Perhaps I exist in bondage to the wind,
heaped on dunes of remote deserts;
in breezes, tracing patterns under the cold moon.
I’m neither a memory of past spirits,
nor illusion, nor fantasy of a living body.
I’m not the spectre in your looking-glass.
Time refuses to multiply me
in infinite Borgesean mirrors.
I can’t duplicate myself.
I’m probably
a chink in the mirror.