“Foolish,”
say my colleagues at the college in New York
but I go anyway.
I bus 27 hrs through desert
(diarrhea, no toilet paper)
to Antofagasta
with its perverted dogs
battleground of indestructible fleas
termites secretly hollowing every wall
drilling holes through books
like secret eyes
(someday the whole city will collapse
in a heap of powder).
Behind the city
mountains of brown dust
announce the desert:
“Life is temporary,” they say,
“It must be given oxygen.”

The houses of the poor shuffle from the dust
like random cartons piled on one another.
“These people,” says Karen,
“they don’t live right.
They had money for bread
for the week
they spent it on wine instead.
Can you imagine?”

Someone else doesn’t live right
and he pays for it.
“Arrested
for defecating in the street,”
the paper says,
gives his name
address
everything.
(Can you imagine!)

Valiant taxis
rattle like pots and pans
doors wired on
brewery steams away
defying the dust with
liquor fumes
lit up all night
like an army of drunks’ noses.
at the Cafe Baquedano
drunks in rumpled pants —
every one a lawyer —
borrow money
and tell us what’s what.

We’re always invited to
Mario’s
12 kids in 3 rooms
chairs and beds circle the new tv
in the living room
— packed house on Saturday afternoons
to watch westerns.
At 35 heart trouble
and he has to quit the police department
now he’s a fisherman
always fish stewing a bottle of wine
“No matter what,” he says,
“in my house everyone eats.”
When his pension check arrives
he takes the 12 kids
wife
grandmother
ancient family maid from Bolivia
everybody’s friends
even a few down-and-outs
all to a nightclub
and blows it all
like a fireworks exhibit on Sept. 18th.
No message but the bang.
He doesn’t live right, I guess.

In the afternoon at the docks
over the glaze of guano
the smell of fish
pelicans swoop and dive;
we all skip work
buy a bottle of pisco
(it burns going down)
lie on the dock
and watch —
trying to be like Mario
but never getting it right.

When his check comes
John pays everybody,
buys a big box of noodles
to live on for the month
and is broke.
“Nothing but noodles?”
“I get invited out a lot,” he says.
Brad, Lucho, Juan Carlos & I
move in over the warehouse.
We have no water.
I walk to the bar next door
& order a bucket of water.
The bartender gives me one,
but he doesn’t like it,
so we economize, wash up
over the sink,
let the water down the open drain
into the bucket underneath
— you have to watch your feet —
use that to flush the toilet.
The landlord wants us to pay the bill.
He comes every night and says,
“For life, three things are needed
First, air is needed.
Second, water.”
He never says what the third is.
We don’t like him; his name is Felix.
Someone we do like
comes by from Bolivia
with a bag of coca.
We hear it makes your mouth numb,
we never get around to chewing any
we like our mouths
the way they are I guess.
I go to the movies and bring
back a supply
of fleas for the cat.
He’s a kitten.
We name him Strangler
but it’s not funny, so
we change the name to Mauricio
(Paloma’s idea)
Not funny either, but
he keeps it, Paloma's only three.
Now the toilet paper’s on strike;
we meet a sailor
who gives us some German toilet paper.
“No wonder they started two wars,”
Brad says, and we go out
for a newspaper. Now the cat
brings in a supply of fleas for me,
and a friend through the skylight
to eat all the tuna fish.
I throw his friend out;
the fleas refuse to leave.
I pick up a bike at the office,
we have nothing to do,
so we wonder can we ride it down the stairs.
“You’d go right through the wall,”
Juan Carlos figures out.
We picture that for a while —
head through the splintered wall . . .
We don’t do it.
We do go out for some wine
& those cigars with the chunks of wood in them;
sometimes the smoke won’t draw at all,
I investigate
& always find wood,
little pieces of wood.
John gets the local Luckies,
the kind the customs agent smelled.
He said it wasn’t tobacco.
He didn’t know what it was, oh well,
we smoke them anyway
& drink the wine and talk.
The next day Ruth
gives me her old
typewriter and I’m
a poet. I already
have a table.

Down from the Northern Desert
into the lush South forest
lakes ringed with half-hidden chalets
the Volcan Osorno
posing for gorgeous postcards.

We spend a day in the Puerto Montt mist
waiting for the weekly boat to Chiloe
where dolphins leap
to look at us on deck.

Saturday afternoon
the rain has stopped
crowds idle out of the closing shops.
We sightsee nothing in particular
and chat.

Maria Elena, the prim librarian from Valparaiso,
who knows I like literature,
asks (theoretically)
“Would you like to meet Pablo Neruda?”

“Sure, why not?” I answer theoretically,
but she ’s gone.

Then she reappears from the crowd
hand in hand
with Neruda, an apparition from a dustjacket,
enthusiastic and earthy as his odes,
happy to meet me
collaborating with an American photographer
in Chiloe,
with its fishing villages and ancient customs . . .

When he leaves, still expansive, smiling,
(it ’s a pleasure to know me),
“I didn ’t know you knew Neruda,”
I say to Maria Elena.
“I didn ’t,” she says,
“I just thought you ’d like to meet him.”

Three days later
as we stroll down a dirt road
behind the University in Valdivia,
coming the other way,
his arm around a blond,
is Neruda.
He waves and smiles in recognition.

Ah, what a place!
Where great poets are friends with everyone!

James Galbraith taught English at the Universidad del Norte in Antofagasta. Since returning from Chile he has been teaching English and Spanish at Harford Community College in Bel Air, Maryland