It’s nine
o’clock on the Zocalo
The romantic Paseo
goes down
The
socialists, spooks and cold warriors
Are buying
another round
Veterans of
the Spanish Civil War
Both sides,
loyal and not
They all
gather and drink together
Because now
that’s all that they’ve got
They sit with
the retired case officers
From the CIA
and the OSS
Men who
pursued them for decades,
Now looking
for a place to rest
There’s
Margaret, who loves her square dancing
Once married
to the station chief
Who looked
after our interests in Chile
When Allende
was El Jefé
She said “I
remember the generals,
They were all
such handsome men,
They danced
just like Astaire in the movies,
Especially
Gustavo Leigh Guzman
Leigh it was
who first thought of,
Then put into
practice as well
The idea of
dropping young students
Out of
choppers into the swell
There was
Bill, the old CIA man
Who carried a
gun when he drank
He’d flag random cars in the Zocalo
To take him
home when he stank
There was my
friend Captain John Yancey
US Marine
Corps (Retired)
He had taken
3 bullets to the face in Korea
He was the
bravest man alive
There were
Ruth and Beryl Becker
New Yawkers
to the bone
They had fled
the US from McCarthy
For decades
they called Mexico home
There was big
gorgeous Gail from Tulsa
Miss Oklahoma
1965
She was one
of my girlfriends
A beauty at
six foot five
There were
Kathy and Jean the twosome
No one could
pry them apart
I managed to
crack open Kathy
And she gave
me a piece of her heart
There was
Matt, my pal from the city
He knew all
the hookers in town
We would buy
our weed together
From a
highway patrolman we found
One day alone
in the Zocalo,
Enjoying a
lemon flan
I saw a
Mercedes, Henry Kissinger in it
Escorting the
Shah of Iran
Joni Mitchell
was in town visiting
Charlie
Mingus, who lived there
She was
supposed to be recording an album
But she never
came up for air
I had to
leave that magic town
I returned to
the cold of Quebec
But when it’s
9 o’clock on the Zocalo
All my
memories come flooding back
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