After the birthday crowds thin out,
after the “Hokey Pokey” and “Chicken Dance,”
after the parents have towed their shaky kids   
like cabooses ready to decouple	
and the pint-sized skaters have circled the rink 
like a gang of meerkats spun into a 10-car pileup, 
you turn sideways and angle by as “Another One Bites the Dust” 
thumps overhead. You give a finger point to the DJ stand 
because, in your mind, we are soldiers in the march against time,
grooving to the retro beat while the disco ball shines overhead
cut crystal against rainbow walls. 
You glide like Mercury or Apollo Ono 
without wings or skin suit, in low-rider jeans 
that hug your body like you hug corners, 
pass them all on the smoothed-out parquet floor,
worn down by time and rhythm. The trick is 
to make it look effortless, remind them that
your quickness is a kind of love. You are the spark 
between wood and wheel. And when your cranky kids 
hang out by the wall ready to go,
holding those eight wheels by their brown leather tongues, 
you give them a wave and keep circling, 
Just one more song, you say.   
This is your “me” time. It’s all-skate. 
You’ve got your whole self in—
That’s what it’s all about.

Joseph and Margaret Cavanaugh, ca. 1847

There’s Bridget and Michael and Catherine and Ann,
there’s Francis X., Moira, Theresa, and Sean:
none of them shivering, everyone fed,
head to feet sleeping, four butts to a bed.

The 1845 Irish potato crop failure resulted in widespread famine. More than one million Irish people—one out of every nine—died. Hundreds of thousands emigrated to England, Scotland, and the New World. Mortality rates of up to 30% were common on the “coffin ships” crossing the Atlantic.

(Skip to the original poem in Spanish)

translated by Edith Grossman

Against a topaz sky
and huge windows starry 
with delirious heartsease
and sensual red cayenne;
the sweet twilight breeze
fragrant with almond and Indian orange;
on the Moorish tiles,
wearing their spike-heeled shoes,
lowcut dresses and wide swirling skirts;
their long obsidian hairdos
in the style of the time;
perfumed, olive-skinned, smiling,
my aunts danced the mambo
and sang: "Doctor, tomorrow, 
you can't pull my tooth
even if I die of the pain."

those evenings of my childhood
when my aunts were young and belonged to me,
and I danced hiding in their skirts,
our lives were a happy mambo—
I remember.

Contra un cielo topacio
y ventanales estrellados
con delirantes trinitarias
y rojas, sensuales cayenas;
el fragante céfiro verpertino
oloroso de almendros y azahar de la India;
sobre las baldozsas de diseños moriscos,
con zapatillas de tacón aguja,
vestidos descotados y amplias polleras;
sus largas, obsidianas cabelleras
a la usanza de la época;
perfumadas, trigueñas, risueñas,
mis tías bailaban el mambo
canturreando, "Doctor, mañana
no me saca ud. la muela,
aunque me muera del dolor."

Aquellas tardes en mi infancia
cuando mis tías eran muchanchas y me pertenecían,
y yo bailaba cobijado entre sus polleras,
nuestras vidas eran un mambo feliz
que no se olvida.

This is my pastoral: that used-car lot
where someone read Song of Myself over the loudspeaker

all afternoon, to customers who walked among the cars
mostly absent to what they heard,

except for the one or two who looked up
into the air, as though they recognized the reckless phrases

hovering there with the colored streamers,
their faces suddenly loose with a dreamy attention.

This is also my pastoral: once a week,
in the apartment above, the prayer group that would chant

for a sustained hour. I never saw them,
I didn’t know the words they sang, but I could feel

my breath running heavy or light
as the hour’s abstract narrative unfolded, rising and falling

like cicadas, sometimes changing in abrupt
turns of speed, as though a new cantor had taken the lead.

And this, too, is my pastoral: reading in my car
in the supermarket parking lot, reading the Spicer poem

where he wants to write a poem as long
as California. It was cold in the car, then it was too dark.

Why had I been so forlorn, when there was so much
just beyond, leaning into life? Even the cart

humped on a concrete island, the left-behind grapefruit
in the basket like a lost green sun.

And this is my pastoral: reading again and again
the paragraph in the novel by DeLillo where the family eats

the takeout fried chicken in their car,
not talking, trading the parts of the meal among themselves

in a primal choreography, a softly single consciousness,
while outside, everything stumbled apart,

the grim world pastoralizing their heavy coats,
the car’s windows, their breath and hands, the grease.

If, by pastoral, we mean a kind of peace,
this is my pastoral: walking up Grand Avenue, down Sixth

Avenue, up Charing Cross Road, down Canal,
then up Valencia, all the way back to Agua Dulce Street,

the street of my childhood, terrifying with roaring trucks
and stray dogs, but whose cold sweetness

flowed night and day from the artesian well at the corner,
where the poor got their water. And this is

also my pastoral: in 1502, when Albrecht Dürer painted
the young hare, he painted into its eye

the window of his studio. The hare is the color
of a winter meadow, brown and gold, each strand of fur

like a slip of grass holding an exact amount
of the season’s voltage. And the window within the eye,

which you don’t see until you see, is white as a winter sky,
though you know it is joy that is held there.

Old Time has turned another page
      Of eternity and truth;
He reads with a warning voice to age,
      And whispers a lesson to youth.
A year has fled o’er heart and head
      Since last the yule log burnt;
And we have a task to closely ask,
      What the bosom and brain have learnt?
Oh! let us hope that our sands have run
      With wisdom’s precious grains;
Oh! may we find that our hands have done
      Some work of glorious pains.
Then a welcome and cheer to the merry new year,
      While the holly gleams above us;
With a pardon for the foes who hate,
      And a prayer for those who love us.

We may have seen some loved ones pass
      To the land of hallow’d rest;
We may miss the glow of an honest brow
      And the warmth of a friendly breast:
But if we nursed them while on earth,
      With hearts all true and kind,
Will their spirits blame the sinless mirth
      Of those true hearts left behind?
No, no! it were not well or wise
      To mourn with endless pain;
There’s a better world beyond the skies,
      Where the good shall meet again.
Then a welcome and cheer to the merry new year, 
      While the holly gleams above us;
With a pardon for the foes who hate,
      And a prayer for those who love us.

Have our days rolled on serenely free
      From sorrow’s dim alloy?
Do we still possess the gifts that bless
      And fill our souls with joy?
Are the creatures dear still clinging near?
      Do we hear loved voices come?
Do we gaze on eyes whose glances shed
      A halo round our home?
Oh, if we do, let thanks be pour’d
      To Him who hath spared and given,
And forget not o’er the festive board
      The mercies held from heaven.
Then a welcome and cheer to the merry new year,
      While the holly gleams above us;
With a pardon for the foes who hate,
      And a prayer for those who love us.

                    
          When the merry spring time weaves
          Its peeping bloom and dewy leaves;
          When the primrose opes its eye,
          And the young moth flutters by;
          When the plaintive turtle dove
          Pours its notes of peace and love;
And the clear sun flings its glory bright and wide—
          Yet, my soul will own
          More joy in winter's frown,
And wake with warmer flush at Christmas tide.

          The summer beams may shine
          On the rich and curling vine,
          And the noon-tide rays light up
          The tulip's dazzling cup:
          But the pearly misletoe
          And the holly-berries' glow
Are not even by the boasted rose outvied;
          For the happy hearts beneath
          The green and coral wreath
Love the garlands that are twined at Christmas tide.

          Let the autumn days produce
          Yellow corn and purple juice,
          And Nature's feast be spread
          In the fruitage ripe and red;
          ’Tis grateful to behold
          Gushing grapes and fields of gold,
When cheeks are brown'd and red lips deeper dyed:
          But give, oh! give to me
          The winter night of glee,
The mirth and plenty seen at Christmas tide.

          The northern gust may howl,
          The rolling storm-cloud scowl,
          King Frost may make a slave
          Of the river's rapid wave,
          The snow-drift choke the path,
          Or the hail-shower spend its wrath;
But the sternest blast right bravely is defied,
          While limbs and spirits bound
          To the merry minstrel sound,
And social wood-fires blaze at Christmas tide.

          The song, the laugh, the shout,
          Shall mock the storm without;
          And sparkling wine-foam rise
          ’Neath still more sparkling eyes;
          The forms that rarely meet
          Then hand to hand shall greet,
And soul pledge soul that leagues too long divide.
          Mirth, friendship, love, and light
          Shall crown the winter night,
And every glad voice welcome Christmas tide.

          But while joy's echo falls 
          In gay and plenteous halls,
          Let the poor and lowly share
          The warmth, the sports, the fare;
          For the one of humble lot
          Must not shiver in his cot,
But claim a bounteous meed from wealth and pride.
          Shed kindly blessings round,
          Till no aching heart be found;
And then all hail to merry Christmas tide!

The snow,
ah yes, ah yes indeed,
is white and beautiful, white and beautiful,
verily beautiful –
from my window.
The sea,
ah yes, ah yes indeed,
is green and alluring, green and alluring,
verily alluring –
from the shore.
Love, ah yes, ah yes, ah yes indeed,
verily yes, ah yes indeed!

At times the blind see light,
And that moment is the Sistine ceiling,

Grace among buildings—no one asks
For it, no one asks.

After all, this is solitude,
Daylight’s finger,

Blake’s angel
Parting willow leaves.

I should know better.
Get with the business

Of walking the lovely, satisfied,
Indifferent weather—

Bread baking
On Arthur Avenue

This first warm day of June.
I stand on the corner

For priceless seconds.
Now everything to me falls shadow.

When she looked down from the kitchen window
into the back yard and the brown wicker
baby carriage in which she had tucked me
three months old to lie out in the fresh air
of my first January the carriage
was shaking she said and went on shaking
and she saw I was lying there laughing
she told me about it later it was
something that reassured her in a life
in which she had lost everyone she loved
before I was born and she had just begun
to believe that she might be able to
keep me as I lay there in the winter
laughing it was what she was thinking of
later when she told me that I had been
a happy child and she must have kept that
through the gray cloud of all her days and now
out of the horn of dreams of my own life
I wake again into the laughing child