Poetry

	*The Window*   You closed the window, And it was the world, the world that wanted to enter, all at once, the world that gave that great shout, that great, deep, rough cry you did not want to hear --- and now will never call to you again as it called today, asking your mercy!   The whole of life was in that cry: the wind, the sea, the land with its poles and its tropics, the unreachable skys, the ripened grain in the resounding wheat field, the think heat above the wine presses, dawn on the mountains, shadowy woods, parched lips stuck together longing for cool water condensed in pools, and all pleasures, all sufferings, all loves, all hates, were in this day, anxiously asking your mercy...   But you were afraid of life, And you remained alone, behind the closed and silent window, not understanding that the world calls to a man only once that way, and with that kind of cry, with that great, rough, hoarse cry!   -George Kearns *Identity* Let them be as a flower, always watered, fed, guarded, admired, but harnessed to a pot of dirt.   I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed, clinging on the cliffs, like an eagle Wind - wavering above high jagged rocks.   To have broken through the surface of stone, to live, to feel exposed to the maddness of the vast, eternal sky. To beswayed by the breezes of an ancient sea, carrying my soul, my seed, beyond the mountains of time or into the abyss of the bizarre.   I'd rather be unseen, and if then shunned by everyone, than to be a pleasant smelling flower, growing in clusters in the fertile valley, where they're praised, handled, and plucked by greedy, human hands.   I'd rather smell of musty, green stench than of sweet, fragrant lilac. If I could stand alone, strong and free, I'd rather be a tall, ugly weed.   -Julio Noboa Polanco