My sorrow, when she’s here with me,
     Thinks these dark days of autumn rain
Are beautiful as days can be;
She loves the bare, the withered tree;
     She walks the sodden pasture lane.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.
     She talks and I am fain to list:
She’s glad the birds are gone away,
She’s glad her simple worsted grey
     Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,
     The faded earth, the heavy sky,
The beauties she so truly sees,
She thinks I have no eye for these,
     And vexes me for reason why.

Not yesterday I learned to know
     The love of bare November days
Before the coming of the snow,
But it were vain to tell her so,
     And they are better for her praise.

a walk in a midwinter ochre wood
to get some england sun
as it steals away—
a little poodle runs to show you love;
you like the feel of the animal’s body
on your leg; it’s something
of an acceptance so you smile
and are not the least bothered; you even hope
it’ll jump, though the lady yells
no jumping Sam! no jumping!
and when she adds ‘you know he
just loves EVERYbody!’ why should you
suddenly feel tears coming?—
it’s just that EVERYbody; how do you
explain this? there’s nobody to explain
it to: why she needed to take away
from you this one feeling of special?
how could she know it was the most
human moment of your day—
the most human moment in weeks?

^{to Mary Rose}

Here is our little yard  

too small            for a pool  
or chickens   let alone 

a game of tag or touch 
football       Then 

again   this stub-  
born patch  

of crabgrass  is just 
big enough      to get down  

flat on our backs 
with eyes wide open    and face 

the whole gray sky  just 
as a good drizzle 

begins                   I know  
we’ve had a monsoon  

of grieving to do  
which is why  

I promise    to lie 
beside you  

for as long as you like  
or need  

We’ll let our elbows 
kiss     under the downpour  

until we’re soaked  
like two huge nets  
                    left  

beside the sea  
whose heavy old

ropes strain  
stout with fish 

If we had to     we could  
feed a multitude  

with our sorrows  
If we had to  

we could name   a loss  
for every other  

drop of rain   All these  
foreign flowers 

you plant from pot  
to plot  

with muddy fingers  
—passion, jasmine, tuberose—  

we’ll sip 
the dew from them  

My darling                here
is the door I promised  

Here
is our broken bowl Here  

                        my hands  
In the home of our dreams  

the windows open  
in every  

weather—doused  
or dry—May we never  

be so parched 

As the falling rain
trickles among the stones
memories come bubbling out.
It’s as if the rain
had pierced my temples.
Streaming
streaming chaotically
come memories:
the reedy voice
of the servant
telling me tales
of ghosts.
They sat beside me
the ghosts
and the bed creaked
that purple-dark afternoon
when I learned you were leaving forever,
a gleaming pebble
from constant rubbing
becomes a comet.
Rain is falling
falling
and memories keep flooding by
they show me a senseless
world
a voracious
world—abyss
ambush
whirlwind
spur
but I keep loving it
because I do
because of my five senses
because of my amazement
because every morning,
because forever, I have loved it
without knowing why.

I never feel so alive as when I am    
writing and have no right    
answer for what this means   
for the lives of others, how

to live in the after which after    
all means the now of our living   
together when together    
means death for all

those forbidden from   
entering the home so    
methodically built until after   
they are dead. Only 

after will locked doors    
swing amply open to   
admit the murdered    
into rooms of vast

crushed comfort, whose    
inhabitants eat and sleep   
on furnishings carved   
with corpses, stepping

with hospitable sorrow   
around the bodies of the   
dead, speaking dirges   
into the phantom

darkness. What happens 
in the quiet grave where  
the living make themselves   
at home, where noisily

they intend to thrive, where  
the poem itself concedes 
to suffering so it might persist   
in blazing against it.

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
Under my head till morning; but the rain
Is full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sigh
Upon the glass and listen for reply,
And in my heart there stirs a quiet pain
For unremembered lads that not again
Will turn to me at midnight with a cry.
Thus in winter stands the lonely tree,
Nor knows what birds have vanished one by one,
Yet knows its boughs more silent than before:
I cannot say what loves have come and gone,
I only know that summer sang in me
A little while, that in me sings no more.

Dear President,

I’m a Hispanic immigrant
You know me
You’ve heard me.

But you don’t

You know my story
You know where I’m from
You know what I look for
You know what I want.

But you don’t

Like thousands of people
Like thousands of stories
I’m a Hispanic immigrant
But you don’t know me.

I left pinolillo y cacao helado
Fritangas los viernes en la noche
Nacatamal los fines de semana
A mi abuela en la casa

Al perrito que quedó solo y llorando
A mi Nicaragua

Mi Nicaragua y su rica cultura
Sus hermosas playas y volcanes ardientes
Su gente amorosa y hermosa

I left my Nicaragua hoping
That my future would look brighter here

I left hoping

Y todo por el
“American Dream”

El American Dream que se va desvaneciendo
The longer I stay
Because the longer I stay
I realize
I am not heard
I am not seen
And I am not wanted here

“Permanent residency or citizenship”
Is the first requisite for any scholarship

Because I have to be one of them
I have to be an American
I have to speak English
In order to have real opportunities

Because while I’m still Hispanic
While I’m still an immigrant
There’s no American Dream

¿Y el sueño americano?

With no scholarships
How do I pay ten thousand dollars per year?
How can my immigrant parents with immigrants’ jobs pay ten thousand dollars per year for each of their children? Or even one?

Where’s the American Dream for them?

There isn’t one
Cause they can’t speak English
And they have to be American

The American Dream
That promised we could study, work, live
Fades away

And if there are so many stories like mine?
If there are so many people like me
If they decide to take away my identity and label me as just another immigrant
If presidents, Americans, put all of us into one group
If they assume that they know each one of our stories and each one of our needs
If they think their system is fair
If they think that they’re helping us
If they think they know what’s best for us
If they know immigrants so well
Then how are we still not seen?
How are we still so overlooked?
How are we still so overworked?

Working for a government that does not want us in their country
That is the American Dream.

I scarce believe my love to be so pure
   As I had thought it was,
   Because it doth endure
Vicissitude, and season, as the grasse;
Methinks I lied all winter, when I swore,
My love was infinite, if spring make’it more.

But if this medicine, love, which cures all sorrow
With more, not onely bee no quintessence,
But mixt of all stuffes, paining soule, or sense,
And of the Sunne his working vigour borrow,
Love’s not so pure, and abstract, as they use
To say, which have no Mistresse but their Muse,
But as all else, being elemented too,
Love sometimes would contemplate, sometimes do

And yet no greater, but more eminent,
   Love by the spring is grown;
   As, in the firmament,
Starres by the Sunne are not inlarg’d, but showne,
Gentle love deeds, as blossomes on a bough,
From love’s awakened root do bud out now.

If, as in water stir’d more circles bee
Produc’d by one, love such additions take,
Those like so many spheares, but one heaven make,
For, they are all concentrique unto thee,
And though each spring doe adde to love new heate,
As princes do in times of action get
New taxes, and remit them not in peace,
No winter shall abate the spring’s encrease.

Golden-eyed girl, do you see what I see?
Do you see behind the veil that Life
           laughs through?
Golden-eyed girl, I would like to laugh
           with you.
But my veil is torn, and I see things pass
Like shadows in the depths of a crystal glass.

Golden-eyed girl, you are young as springtime,
Your great eyes are dreamful, your rare
           lips sweet.
Shadows matter little to youth with dancing feet
All of Life’s skeletons wear gay dresses
And youth is deceived by even Death’s caresses.

Golden-eyed girl, you have years to dance and
           wonder
Before your Life’s curtain will wear into holes
And let you see the hopelessness hidden in souls.
You have many moons of laughter, many
           years to go
Before you’ll learn how heavy dancing feet
           can grow.

Always at dusk, the same tearless experience,
The same dragging of feet up the same well-worn path
To the same well-worn rock;
The same crimson or gold dropping away of the sun
The same tints—rose, saffron, violet, lavender, grey
Meeting, mingling, mixing mistily;
Before me the same blue black cedar rising jaggedly to a point;
Over it, the same slow unlidding of twin stars,
Two eyes, unfathomable, soul-searing,
Watching, watching—watching me;
The same two eyes that draw me forth, against my will dusk after dusk;
The same two eyes that keep me sitting late into the night, chin on knees
Keep me there lonely, rigid, tearless, numbly miserable,
       —The eyes of my Regret.

An eye from the Creator,
a fire, bright, setting slowly
over the cusp of the “new world,”

kissing the Old World, softly
to sleep, it is the kissing that is soft,
not the sleeping.

Under the light of that unwanted dawn there is
a warrior still left standing, we
war-journey them

          to the battle and back,
                     to the battle and back,
                                to the battle and back,

radiance, felt through the
water that flows blue but runs red,
around and around

that quickly setting sun,

around and around
a circle, there are
songs for the way our warriors
used to honorably drift away

We used to die in battle
but today they ring out
— “whatchu tryna tell me?”
while we slosh a bottle around,
we laugh about how we are singing

Songs from the wrong eagles,
our war journey is through the hills
with the windows down

In a red ford with
the tribal tag torn
and a car battery in the front seat

We are nurtured,
Remembered,
by the birds who fly
around and around

while we hit our hands
on the hoods of clunkers
and when it stops being sacred,

We laugh,
We funk #49,
here we live,
here we are live.

We laugh,
my warrior, we aren’t
the warriors, of anything
like that, anymore.