In The Stoplight Jungle Poem by Robert Rorabeck

Pearled fragrantly in the fragile vacillations
In the stoplight jungle pressed by its more bucolic peers
To the coast
Where the conquistadors once fumbled amidst the Indians
Who were so many and all like virgins,
And showed them the colors of the diseases of a religion
That became the savior of their extinction:
And I thought of you, in a caesura over my dead grandmother:
I thought of you, while my body tried to metamorphose,
While all of the shops were closed,
The forts now only good for tourists also closed,
And the echinopsis in the thistles and spines, hooded,
The cloying fragrances of jasmine mingling with the alley cats,
As if telling them all of those tales to keep them feral and up
All night, while the indigenous moon hung over the transplanted
Churches,
Its lesser lights beaming down, beaming for the gesticulations of
The saints who seemed all to eager to eat that manna of
A lesser and more pagan existence, while their greater gods had
Betrayed them, evaporating into the beds and shops,
Only to awaken most thoughtlessly to the play and bustle
As the wayward legacy of a bumbling family who could hardly be
Said to deserve him.