To Carlos Fuentes Poem by Bill Grace

The newspaper tells me you were a noble soul
The internet much less kind
If the print reportage is true I have a debt to you
In the granting of hope to one who is obscure.
When I read you left the mighty
To visit your aged nanny
I knew I loved you
Who thought a hundred years not too much
To be discovered, citing Stendhal's 'Le Rouge et le Noir.'
The poverty of my undergraduate years shows
Our wonderful world literature professor never mentioned you
Although in fairness you were in the wrong hemisphere
And the Mexican students were not massacred until 1968,
I guess I have always had a thing for long distance runners
Even when death has sealed their race.