For Toño Cisneros, a poem, Indran Amirthanayagam

                For Toño Cisneros

Who is Cisneros, he asks?

I don’t know. A poet

wont to drink and

a good laugh. He knew

Fitzrovia in the 60s,

spoke English

like a blue blood,

and had English

skepticism, eye

of the toad crouched

under a stone watching

the giant lizard come

tramping through

the bog. The stone

 has been turned

over,  frog dried

and pulled apart

by the forensic

artists; the work

will now be read

by others less gifted

in declamation, but

let us be grateful

that Toño never

belonged

to the academies,

He lived in Miraflores

and wrote, he said,

for two hundred

of his neighbors,

 who walk

in Parque Kennedy,

on Malecon Cisneros.

            Indran Amirthanayagam, October 6, 2012