for Gabriel García Márquez

Did you wear the black shoes,
the patent leather ones?

The streets are clean
where you are going, or
so they say.

Gabo, take a little detour
down this fine powder road,
to the wooden shack
where the beers are colder
than cruelty.

All the tables & chairs are dressed
in cheesecloth, the lovers,

sex workers, & soldiers you fathered
wait to smell your cologne one last time.

Please come for the day,
I am roasting a pig in a matchbox,
the village tailor is making
a suit for you—out of palm leaves.
The colonel organized a parade,

we are naming the town after you
follow me down the road.

It is here, just the way you wrote it,
vamos Gabo, come back to us.

 

ELEGY FOR GABO by Roberto Carlos Garcia

 


 

Photo used under CC