The Chilean

Because he became
a citizen of the world
it can almost

sometimes

be easy to forget,

although certainly

not if you'd been Belano,

that he was Chilean.

In the last years of his life
I was in college,

before I'd ever heard of him,

and I became immersed
in the poetry that suffused
certain elements of campus,

and in that process

I took a class

that explored new poetry,

and welcomed visiting poets,

one of which
was Chilean.

To this day

I will always define

the experiences of those days

by the results of that poet's visit

to the classroom one day.

This was in the aftermath of 9/11,

you understand,

the immediate days and years

in its wake.

You will often hear

college campuses 

explained as bastions

of liberal thought,

which was certainly true

in my experience too,

although maybe that's not really it

and it's really that so many students

come from different backgrounds

where they have not yet experienced

or learned or considered

wider ideas

than was in their home life

and don't know how to process

whether to embrace wholesale

or whatever the alternative,

what they learn

outside the classroom.

At any rate,

in this classroom

that day,

my classmates responded in horror

that a Chilean would compare

Chilean tragedy

in the form of a general in white

and the country he held in his gloved grip

to the American tragedy

of 9/11.

Later, 

I would have no problem

comprehending Belano's perspective,

since it defined him,
and why he traveled the world

in response,

and yet at the time
I found myself baffled
that the professor made no counterargument
that I alone understood
how little this classroom

understood the world
around it.

What else could possibly be the point?