Brazil

I condemn five hundredof my closest friendsto death.

Left them on the sidewalkto freeze in the rainunder a plastic tarp.

I am too ashamed to evenlook out the window.

Only Brazil can understandmy sadness

with her science museumin flames.

The following afternoonthere is no evidenceof my trips down the stone steps

and the boxes of booksI stacked in front of my home.

Part of me had hopedthat no one would want them.

But someone did.

Perhaps some students camewith a truck,figuring out a way to earn a buck.

Only Brazil can understandmy regret.

This loss of words.

Now just the skeletonof her science museum is left:

a naked outline in the sky.

The stink of burnt hides,smoking bird feathersand smoldering woodinfuses the air with heaviness.

Firemen talk with each other,drinking coffee from paper cups.

‘My friends! My friends!Why have I forsaken you?I hope that you are in heaven now,’

I lament with self-indulgent hyperbole.

I envision the afterworldas a three-story open-room librarywith rolling ladders,stuffed leather chairs, antique globesand muted chandeliers.

My friends! Warm and comfortabl eon the shelves.

Someday, like a fatherwho has lost a son,a part of me will join you.

And someone mayfind my life story in a book.

The thick and thin of it.

Hands from the futurewill hold what’s left of me.

Eyes will gaze intothe pages of who I am.

And another soul may echothe sorrow I feel

condemning to deathfive hundredof my dearest friends.

But for now,only Brazil understands —

gaping-mouthed,shell-shocked,and shutterless.