Potosi

The moon falls
like a metaphysician
on the silver city

so distressed a metal -
even the horses shod with silver
in the freezing streets

wagons, blue with graffiti
under the spoil-tips,
and at first light

mountain foxes,
red as cinnabar,
moving against the flow

between the silver-bearing lodes,
the upland snow.

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Pauline Stainer


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