Plaza de Mayo holds its tenuous silence
in a tangle of smoking traffic as the sun goes down.
La Casa Rosada encrimsons like a burn
its pigment of blood and whitewash. The pigeons are dense
on the flagstones with their painted handkerchiefs, where
las madres once held silent and tenuous vigil,
setting photos and names on cardboard against an evil
that polluted worse than the traffic the compromised air
of downtown Buenos Aires. I am foreign, here,
with foreign notions of colour and conscience;
but the locals here, too, say la Casa looks far too red,
like a too-fresh semblance of flesh that disappears
into blood and whitewash, without consequence,
till comes some woman with a handkerchief on her head.