Gonzalo(02)

A bit rubish, his clothes ill-fitting,
with the stigma of the provinces upon him
bookish, with a dated but formally correct
and ponderous dissertation to his credit
he disappears in the mountains to emerge
to kill not so much his enemies
as those who are not his friends enough,
then topples power lines
that course through valleys dwarfed
by the cold of mountain ranges
with atmosphere so thin the fox refuses
to chase the viscacha before him
and condors drop obtusely like oddly-shaped rocks
of uncanny buoyancy.
Then villages are seized in altitudes
in which children duly sacrificed for crops
mummify crouched in fetal positions
in egg-shaped sarcophagi planted
upon impossibly distance ridges,
and in that thinned-out atmosphere
Their skin becomes smooth as copper.
Footpaths that tangled
with the local constabulary
lead to his arrest in a safe-house.
Then he is exhibited in a cage like Bigfoot
having evaded both capture
and the camera's soul-theft.
The movement of his thought
forks in capricious directions
he cannot corral: language put him there,
a prison tunic hanging loosely from his frame.