Somewhere between here and Belen

Somewhere between here and Belen, the Rio Grande will narrow to a muddy bead, no more than three feet across from shore to shore. My friend, Nick Markulis, claims he loves the river's color there, and will bathe his toes in the water, and will go on and on about a dry river in Athens that measures its life in olive groves. Stratis Thalassinos told me about these peculiar waters that disappear and turn up again, and, of course, you know of Arethusa's fountain in Syracuse. I do not accuse Markopoulos (do I have the name right?—Markopoulos, Markulis, fugitive names, fugitive lives docking in Halifax) of being too conversant with asphodel meadows, but one cannot remain composed when hunters and cultic figures press their claims upon a sainted afternoon. Think now of the intimate authority of La Candelaria, the Sunday morning concert, the walk through the abandoned streets, where all was an occasion of Bogotá, a memory of Mazatlán, a shaping necessity we might have met at Salamis. Who can be sure that this white cloth will be dissolved by death?