death is a hotel receptionist
that accompanies her victims
from the hospital to the cemetery.
Death seems like a receptionist
in elegant black dress
hyperactive and smiling
to attract new clients.
In the ambulance, the sick tourist
sings a maracatu of farewell:
"Scram, scram!" intones the siren;
"Am going, am going!" says the patient.
Though nurses make a stand
against the death tourism
death multiplies itself there
offering lyrical landscapes.
Against the numbers of mortality
in the shanty-town, of no use,
one hospital vaccinates the destitute
with agile lymphocyte missiles.
The Mother and Child
Institute (codenamed IMIP)
has available missiles
more swift than antibiotics.
