Siqueiro's Heart
for Nadia Benaroudj

The heart has a mind of its own,
a muscle of self-perpetuating pauses,
gushes between flaps.
Each cell keeps the tropical-beats
as blood rushes drumming
into an auricle.

Blood is a sea of iron that crashes
a wave against the chamber wall,
breaks, leaving patterns like veins
on sand as the tide retreats.
Oxygen is the foam that feeds
a body of land under the palm-tree.

The heart is a sound that flutters
under the aurora borealis,
becomes a butterfly,
brush-strokes its paper-wings,
paints the night with neon-flare
in a breeze of murmurs.

The heart is a red fist of clay
that grips unsymmetrically
the body's symmetry,
letting love's grip, then gulp,
then go.

Note: David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974).
Mexican Social Realist Muralist

Copyright © 2001 The President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Webmaster. Last modified Thu, Oct 18, 2001.