Residence on Earth

As we approached the front door, I noticed

grills on the windows, bullet pockmarks

in the wall; inside, a maid served us salad,

potato and cilantro soup—and I saw,

in the amphitheater above Medellín,

the stage where twenty-eight poets read;

clouds gathered; in the ensuing downpour,

I expected the five thousand people to rush out;

instead, a sea of umbrellas appeared,

and people swayed under them; when the readings

resumed, a poet stood, chanted in Vietnamese,

and when I stepped up to the podium,

two rivers flowed down the steps to the far right

and left; as I read our emotions resemble leaves

I understood how poets from all over the world

had come for peace, solidarity, justice—

and when my host, and reader of my poems

in Spanish, invited me into his home, I saw

one way to live during our residencia en la tierra.