Sunday in the Mall

A poem

Photo by Martín Gusinde, Tierra del Fuego, 1920
Begegnungen auf Feuerland. Selk'nam, Yamana, Kawesqar: Fotografien von Martin Gusinde 1918-1924

[The Selk’nam] expressed the liveliest surprise and admiration at [the] whiteness [of my skin], just in the same way in which I have seen the orangoutang do at the Zoological Gardens.

Charles Darwin, British naturalist at Tierra del Fuego, 1832.

Another Indian woman with whom I studied, Angela Loij, once told me that the women laughed at [Halahaches, the male sky spirit] because of fear.

Anne Chapman, Selk’nam Chants, Folkways Records, 1966.

I.

Under the cathedral of tempered glass
the escalators ascend with liturgical patience,
the faithful drift from brand to brand,
their hands accepting bags as medieval pilgrims
accepted relics.

Outside, the buses cough black scripture
onto the avenue;
inside, the air-conditioning erases the season.
January, June, dictatorship, democracy:
all weather is translated into twenty-two degrees.

I sit in the atrium beside a fountain,
whose waters rise and fall like an economic forecast.

II.

Mannequins maintain their neutrality.
Their smiles survive every crisis.
They have witnessed coups of fashion,
the overthrow of last season by the next.

The century has become skilled
at keeping unlike sorrows in adjacent rooms.

Families drift beneath the glass.
A boy stares at a Patagonia advertisement:
ice, wind, distances.
Names survive there. Selk’nam.
The models smile into the wind.

People buy things they had not intended to buy.
They leave stores carrying objects that already seem familiar,
as though they had owned them before entering.

III.

An old man sits alone with his espresso.
He watches the crowd revolve.
Perhaps he recalls another city,
one with unions, barricades, promises.
Or perhaps he is simply tired.

The distinction grows difficult.
A cashier suppresses tears.
A security guard dreams of the sea.
A businessman calculates futures.
A janitor mops away the residue of the present.
Evening gathers beyond the glass.
The sky over the parking lot darkens.
Mountains become silhouettes.
The neon signs achieve their moment of authority.

Outside, night gathers over Santiago.
Inside, the lights grow brighter.

Santiago, Chile.
14 June 2026.

Seba Calfuqueo, Historias coloniales de Chile, Cancionero Chilidungu, 2026.