Reflections of a Minister of State

by Ernesto Cardenal (Nicaragua)
translated by Margaret Randall

What can I do? I am the Minister of Culture
and must attend a reception in such and such an embassy.
Which one? It doesn’t matter.
One or another, they’re all the same.
And suddenly in the bush, by the ditch,
a cat.
The car’s two lights illuminate the two on the cat.
I’d like to stay here
keep observing this cat,
what color it is,
(at night, as the saying goes, everything is the same color)
what it will do next, how it
will move its shoulders.
To stay by the ditch with the cat
my cat
would be great
although I would be imitating Marianne Moore
— for example, that cat of hers with a mouse in its mouth
its tail hanging from it like a shoelace — ,
Davenport says of Marianne Moore:
“She is more interested in the ostrich
than the ornithologist
who wrote the entry for Ostrich
in the Encyclopedia Britannica.”
I continue to think about the cat and Marianne Moore.
And then no more:
I’ve entered the well–lit embassy now
and greet His Excellency the Ambassador.