I am waiting for love
where the escalator ends,
in deepest Sao Paulo
and darkest Brazil

in Praca Republica.
Edifício Itália
scrapes the night sky
with foreign brilliance.

Its light is irrelevant.

Up from the metro,
irrelevant faces
heave up like vomit
from a lower darkness.

Around me, on benches,
the destitute bodies,
bagged in stolen plastic,
wait out the rain.

But the poor are irrelevant.

I await the beloved.

I stare down the gorge
of this dangerous republic
in all its darkness
till the beloved’s arrival

makes darkness irrelevant.