Mow in Mexico

They took away my weights,
Mow complained through the bars.
'Why'd they do that? What else are
you gonna do, just sit here and rot?'
I was getting too big and some of
the guards are afraid of me.
'Afraid of you? You're like the
gentlest soul I know.'
Tell that to Caesar. 'Caesar?' Yeah,
general overseer here, major hard ass.
I never mentioned him?
He's got it in for me. One way or
another, he'll be the death of me,
I know it. 'This whole mess, Mow.
We just gotta get you out.' No use,
my friend. These three years will
expire soon, I'll stroll out the front
door, and they'll just slap the cuffs
on me again like a half dozen times
before. I'm not hung up on it
like I used to be. I fucked up and
why should I get off easy just
because I'm white, just because I'm
from north of the border? You know,
I've actually come around to Caesar's
way of thinking. 'How in the hell is
that?' Caesar, he's an old guy,
gotta be 80 if he's a day. He's seen
the world change, man, the whole
world, every single part of every
single part of it, and Mexico has
been lying here in the middle,
amid the growing piles of waste and
scorn, the permanent loss of integrity,
the mountains of discarded lives,
lying here growing more and more
certain she's always been right.
'Right about what?' About the fact
that her catholic character and
the rampant mixing of bloods which
happened here are, in truth, at the
very heart of what it means for all
of us to have been born into this
mongrel New World. About the fact
that the ancient ways and the papal
ways, the spirit of the forests
and the Virgin Mary,
the primeval light and every
democratic revolution in history
all lie down together and fuck
every night in a dirty alley somewhere
in Mexico City. Here, in this tiny
jail cell, smaller than the bedroom
I grew up in, in this small town that
no one knows but which knows
the history of everything west of
the Atlantic ocean, here
in this space I've finally accepted
and come to call my own,
I can see Cortez himself at last,
standing in the hall laughing at me,
saying, You stupid gringo, did you
think you know better than we do?
We know better than all your very
Protestant, puritan, and pale, white
grandparents put together. Here
you will finally really grasp this
whole new world they helped bring
into being, you will finally really see
just how little you mean to it.
'He says that to you? His ghost?'
No, Cortez himself as he lives
in my new life. And he's right. I
mean nothing to Mexico, but
Mexico means impossibly much
to the Americas, to the grotesque
identity of North America, feasting
on flesh and families, devouring every
single last precious moral conviction
along with its tater tots--getting me
out, well, that would be worse
than useless. At least here I have
a shot at bedding down with
America myself. 'In a Mexican
jail?' Yes, with the ghosts and
the roots of us all all around me.
'You want to sleep with America
in a Mexican jail cell? How can
Mexico possibly help you do that?'
Mexico knows. All the dirty little
secrets swept under every rug from
here to Montreal, all the lies,
the stealing, the ashes of all those
who vaporized in their own selfishness.
And I want Mexico to keep teaching
me about America, so that one day
I'll come to know her deeply, know her
in the Biblical sense, but without sin.
I'm getting closer. I can see our country
more clearly than ever now. And I'm
closing in on myself too. 'Closing in?
You could only be like three feet away
from yourself at most, Mow.' No, no, no,
you've got it wrong. I've lived inside
my own flesh for 35 some years
and I'm only now meeting myself for
the first time. 'You sound like a monk.'
I am a monk. And Mexico is my
confessor, my guide, my mentor, and
my ultimate destination. 'What should
I tell your parents?' About what?
'Well, they ask how you're doing
every time they call me.'
Tell my mother I finally found that light
we've both been looking for for eons.
Tell my father I'm sorry. 'That's it?'
When you've finally found peace,
after searching for it and missing it
for more years than you can remember,
sometimes you just don't have
all that much left to say.

(2006)