for César Vallejo

By SIMON ANTON DIEGO BAENA

it’s raining
in Bais
again

the cold is throbbing
at the corners
of this room

the cold is the belfry echoing

the cold is darker here

I seek the plume
that stoked the holes
of those tiny moments
lost among the smoke

I keep hearing that voice
caught in the noise
of the edges of the city
where the crow buried its beak
where silence is mud

the night is a circle
that I must
always enter

Simon Anton Niño Diego Baena hails from Bais City, Negros Oriental, and is the author of two chapbooks, The Magnum Opus Persists in the Evening [Jacar Press] and The Lingering Wound (2River). He was a semi-finalist for the Tomaz Salamun Prize at VERSE in 2021. His work is forthcoming in The Columbia Review, South Dakota Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Apalachee Review, Louisiana Literature, and elsewhere.