Juanito strolls the Rambla.
it’s summer,
it’s long since,
it’s time immovable.

Off to the side
in the Plaza Real
there is music,
a guitar, a saxophone;

along the wide avenue,
some chairs, guarded
by pensioners,
lest a pittance slip by.

A dry sun bleaches dreams
caught in the haze
in the gaze of a young man
newly arrived,

spent of purpose.
A fly, suspended on a mote
of sunlight, hovers and
retreats half-heartedly.

Juanito strolls the Rambla,
the wide boulevard
depleted also, for 30 years,
of purpose.

And at the end,
in the Plaza de Cataluña,
only the pigeons remember the war
unless you count the people,

who remember only that
they stood staring,
the anarchists and the Guardia,
unwilling to fire the first shot

for hours.