The park is filled with night and fog, 
  The veils are drawn about the world, 
The drowsy lights along the paths 
  Are dim and pearled.

Gold and gleaming the empty streets, 
  Gold and gleaming the misty lake, 
The mirrored lights like sunken swords, 
  Glimmer and shake.

Oh, is it not enough to be 
Here with this beauty over me?
My throat should ache with praise, and I 
Should kneel in joy beneath the sky. 
Oh, beauty, are you not enough?

Why am I crying after love 
With youth, a singing voice and eyes
To take earth’s wonder with surprise?
Why have I put off my pride, 
Why am I unsatisfied, 
I for whom the pensive night
Binds her cloudy hair with light,
I for whom all beauty burns 
Like incense in a million urns? 
Oh, beauty, are you not enough? 
Why am I crying after love?

When you’re called,
you go, Sesshu says. 
But I’m afraid
I won’t go far enough
to stop them
even though
people are dying.
And even though
people are dying,
I remain 
Chicana, a woman 
who won’t keep
this mouth, 
or the other, shut.
So should I
get out of bed  
to write?
Does what I
write matter?
Sesshu says: reread 
Oscar Zeta Acosta’s 
The Revolt of the Cockroach People.
Then I remember:
when you’re
called,
you go.

               How does Love speak?
In the faint flush upon the telltale cheek, 
And in the pallor that succeeds it; by 
The quivering lid of an averted eye––
The smile that proves the parent to a sigh––
               Thus doth Love speak. 

               How does Love speak? 
By the uneven heart-throbs, and the freak 
Of bounding pulses that stand still and ache,
While new emotions, like strange barges, make 
Along vein-channels their disturbing course;
Still as the dawn, and with the dawn’s swift force––
               Thus doth Love speak. 

               How does Love speak? 
In the avoidance of that which we seek––
The sudden silence and reserve when near––
The eye that glistens with an unshed tear––
The joy that seems the counterpart of fear, 
As the alarmed heart leaps in the breast,
And knows, and names, and greets its godlike guest––
               Thus doth Love speak.

               How does love speak?
In the proud spirit suddenly grown meek––
The haughty heart grown humble; in the tender 
And unnamed light that floods the world with splendour;
In the resemblance which the fond eyes trace 
In all fair things to one beloved face; 
In the shy touch of hands that thrill and tremble––
In looks and lips that can no more dissemble––
               Thus doth Love speak. 

               How does Love speak? 
In the wild words that uttered seem so weak 
They shrink ashamed to silence; in the fire
Glance strikes with glance, swift flashing high and higher, 
Like lightnings that precede the mighty storm; 
In the deep soulful stillness; in the warm, 
Impassioned tide that sweeps through throbbing veins,
Between the shores of keen delights and pains;
In the embrace where madness melts in bliss, 
And in the convulsive rapture of a kiss––
               Thus doth Love speak.

I don’t usually write because I’m too busy being afraid of it. Not of writing but the it. It’s more like breaking open a fruit. Not to taste but to see what bleeds out. Here is a country. Here is a person in that country who has no papers but digs holes in the earth, plants trees, buries his shadow. The country hates him and hates me too, a little less, because I have papers. A document is a strange thing. To ask the placenta for its numerical origin. To tell the dirt it belongs to you. Poets should be concerned with how an empire makes us hate the people without papers. Who could be us, who are us, but temporarily less human because it is convenient for the jobs. The jobs are too important to stop the bombs that burn the flesh of the children who were my face as a child, but I live here, with papers. I call it my life. This language is a chain of accidents. What I’m trying to say is no one gives a fuck about your poems but write them anyway. If you’ve got a body, a pen, a shadow that follows you like a dog, then make it mean something. You are alive among flesh explained back to us as furniture. Hope is a tax. Each word—say it aloud—I am here—is a coin, a debt owed to love. Take the echo seriously. Our living is the plot to sing completion. Let it fill you, let it bruise. Greet the stranger: did you know we share a wick?

^{To see a world in a grain of sand …
—from “Auguries of Innocence” by William Blake}

We are Starseeds  
                   every one of us –  
                                                     you & me,  
                       & me and you  
                           & him & her,  
                                                    & them  
                                                    & they  
                                                    & those  
                    Who know of this  
                         are truly blessed  …  

 True for all  
                    living beings,  
                                        beings living –  
                                                               not humans only,  
                                         but ants & trees  
                                              & the open breeze,  
                                                  things that breathe  
                                                      air or fire,  
                                                         water, earth  
                                       all  kinds of dust  
                                                                & dirt,  
                                                                   particles  
                                        a  part of all,  
                                                            all a part  
                                                                          of  
  Everything  
            that is  
        in everything;  
                                 Thus, it Sings!!!  
                                                      & its song  
                                                                    is Life,  
                                                                       & Life
                                                                                 is!!! …  
  a  seed of Stars,  
                      the dust of Suns  
                                                & Moons  
                                                        rocks & dust  
                                       &  outer smoke  
                                                    in outer space  
  Floating  
        in a bath of timelessness,  
                                           counted, measured  
                                                  numbered  
                                   by some species –  
                                                      others caring not;  
  Science & Mathematics  
                     trying to plot  
                                             Poetry in motion,  
                                                                                Motion  
                                                in a Helix’s curve,  
                                And Life  
                                       on Earth
                                           becomes visible
                                                                  to You
                                         through the naked I!

In the shadows of city lights, we dwelled,
untold stories, almas olvidadas,
enduring streets where dreams were bought and sold.

Corazones—like broken glass,
reflecting pain, the sting of scorn,
searching for love en la oscuridad.

Walking the piers—our runway, steps unsure,
inocencia perdida seeking solace, grace,
amidst the chaos, makeshift homes.

Voices silenced, cries ignored,
por un mundo that turned a blind eye,
yet we found familia in our souls.

Remember these legends,
children marked by endless strife,
love soaring entre el odio.

In this lucha, there was truth,
in this love, there was vida,
in this survival, there was hope.

The universe demotes me, 
yet again, to coin-operated laundry, 
and each night, when everyone 
is sleeping, our tongues all migrate
one mouth to the left. The tongue 
in your mouth, now, is not 
the one you started out with. Your tongue
is half a world away. None of my dead, either,
have ever been interested 
in coming back. Plastic cups
drift into my yard
from the fraternity house across the street. 
Brothers, I’ve been looking
for someone to hand my body
over to, so that the dirt
will not page through it. Rib bones 
like lines, clouds like accordions, 
and soon enough the rain 
dropping like choir members. What can I say? 
What could be said. The church 
was always so hot. Tongue
come back, come back
for a little bit longer. I’ve only got 
the one death to my name, one death
and I’m not going to ruin it.

That you will leave, like all
things leave, that you have left, 
that you left. The lilacs brace
themselves for this sort of blue.

The howl and bloat, a mechanical
melancholy. My hobby. My horse.
That you left. An infection
of baby’s breath in your wake.

This is no ordinary square swatch.
No baby blanket. That August,
the garbage festered in Brooklyn,
as it festers every August in Brooklyn,

but no other August in Brooklyn
did you leave. The silver slide. A sad
liberation at your departure. An airy
groan. Snide whale was I. Humpback

on a playground bench. That you
left. I shushed and dug. I rattled.
An oyster in my throat. That you left.
Ribbons of sunlight varicosing

the trash bins. I said, I prefer not to say
I’ve lost a son. In spite. Despite. I said,
a very late miscarriage. I’d miscarried,
an unsafe carrier was I, a womb with

no arms, disco ball with no discs
to refract nor reflect. Was crushed.
How easy to dismiss my grief. My girl 
on the swing. Already there. Already here.

But you. Rain on the hot sidewalk.
Turned mist. Handsome aura. Gone. 

A butterfly dancing in the sunlight, 
A bird singing to his mate, 
The whispering pines, 
The restless sea, 
The gigantic mountains, 
A stately tree,
The rain upon the roof, 
The sun at early dawn,
A boy with rod and hook,
The babble of a shady brook, 
A woman with her smiling babe, 
A man whose eyes are kind and wise, 
Youth that is eager and unafraid—
When all is said, I do love best
A little home where love abides, 
And where there’s kindness, peace, and rest.

^{—after Louise Glück’s “October”}

Violence has changed
me something beautiful 
worldly, not comfortable 
living in a mouth

I’ve long made habit 
of pulling off my skin 
by the forearm 
at night 
joining the arteries 
of lapping tongues and hardened wounds.

I’ve found joy 
meditating on the quality
of my self served stigmatas 
fracturing the columns 
of holy books

An owl opens its mouth 
a church bell climbs out
akimbo
She has learned 
to tightrope in the dark

Listen, I promise you, I have
no stake in this world. No
political affiliations unless
love is a political tool, unless
my body is a political tool,
unless my comrades are a
political tool. I have no
high stake in this world, no
children to want to leave
a better world to, nothing
but fucking & bookmaking
that is my legacy & it is as
undeniable as smoke; yet
may disappear like it too. I
turn on the news & not
owning pearls, I clutch my
fancy juicer to my chest
I gather around me my art
& my mirrors, my plants &
my price of the ticket—a bible.
I think they’re coming for
me. For it. For all my
million little nothings they
consider stakes in this world.
I got no gun, I got no pickup
I got no desire to burn the
world; I don’t own the world
I own stand mixers & an
eggplant colored Le Creuset
a tiny apartment with bad pipes
& creaking floors. I have
no stakes. I barely got health,
I barely got muscle. I want
a garden near an ocean
that won’t eventually swallow
me. I want my only job to be this:
clawing at a white page until Black
appears. & suddenly, in that moment
I got something—

In the very early morning 
Long before Dawn time 
I lay down in the paddock 
And listened to the cold song of the grass. 
Between my fingers the green blades, 
And the green blades pressed against my body. 
“Who is she leaning so heavily upon me?” 
Sang the grass. 
“Why does she weep on my bosom,
Mingling her tears with the tears of my mystic lover?
Foolish little earth child! 
It is not yet time. 
One day I shall open my bosom 
And you shall slip in—but not weeping. 
Then in the early morning 
Long before Dawn time 
Your lover will lie in the paddock. 
Between his fingers the green blades 
And the green blades pressed against his body . . . 
My song shall not sound cold to him 
In my deep wave he will find the wave of your hair 
In my strong sweet perfume, the perfume of your kisses. 
Long and long he will lie there  . . . 
Laughing—not weeping.”

^{This spice mix is featured in many of the dishes in this book, lending them a uniquely Palestinian flavor.
 —Reem Kassis, “The Palestinian Table”}

First they tango on my tongue,
nimble couples careening,
then together
form an Arab-style line dance
stepping, stomping, swaying.

West Indies allspice dazzles,
berries tangling with cinnamon sticks,
while cloves, Indonesian natives,
lead with a spirited solidarity solo.

Coriander seeds offer greetings in Hindi
as others toast comrades in languages
beyond borders and blockades.

Lifting up sisterhood, sun-wizened nutmeg
starts a sibling dance with mace.
Cumin demurs, then surprises
with subtle exultation.

Queen of spices cardamom,
host of the party, gives a nod to flavors
in hiding: lemony, sweet, warm, 
fragrant, nutty, pungent, hot.

Encouraged, feisty black peppercorns
shimmy center stage, organizing
the unique union of nine
for a vivacious global salute.

From my earliest memory,
what looms and envelops
is the light,
saturating
and blinding,
warming
and reassuring,
revealing
and guiding,
with its life-charging
pulse.

These were the beginnings:
a small furnished room,
a crib bathed in luminescence,
a cosmic tunnel
of light
flooding through
the window,
the suspended
particles of dust
so many dancing worlds alit,
miniscule projections
of the giant orbs beyond.

It’s an intimate memory,
with the palpable feel
of having been lived,
but I see it from outside myself.
I’m not yet two;
Pupo, yet unborn.

Another flashback resolves
through Mami’s eyes:
I pull up the chair
to just under the hammock
cradling the newborn Pupo.
I climb up, stretch my body,
and reach with my head,
looking to knock him off
my hammock.
Bad enough having to share Mami.
But soon I’d defend him
against little would-be bullies.

Other reminiscences unfold
bathed in daylight,
played out in street scenes, like:

Going down a midtown sidewalk,
I goggle in awe
at the lost peaks of skyscrapers
piercing a clear blue sky.
Mami, self-conscious,
barks at me from under her breath
to stop staring
like a wonderstruck hick,
¡caramba!

A summer day of 1957,
our block in the Barrio
flushed in daylight and alive—
tops, marbles, and Spaldings
bouncing off stoop step edges.

Strolling down 116th,
heartbeat of the Barrio’s Marqueta,
perusing the wares,
Puerto Rican mothers
haggling with Jewish merchants
in the time-honored tradition
of working people.

Family country outings
to upstate Las Villas or El Duco’s,
grooming and training race horses in New Jersey.
Lucent August skies; embracing, life-affirming green—
nostalgic snatch of the Island.          

Later, finding myself,
the five-mile mid-afternoon treks
between home and Times Square,
brisk pace, youthful, intimate reflection.

Memory’s daylight
is especially brilliant,
tinged in affection,
stories, and warmth.
Its glow from the past
yet reaches us,
covering us
in our first innocence,
our earliest sense of wonder
when everything was new.

Dawn of my infancy,
engulf me, for a suspended moment,
in the memory
of first light,
newborn wonderment,
bright emerging life.

Oh, pulsing, dazzling radiance!

As if some little Arctic flower,
Upon the polar hem,
Went wandering down the latitudes,
Until it puzzled came
To continents of summer,
To firmaments of sun,
To strange, bright crowds of flowers,
And birds of foreign tongue!
I say, as if this little flower
To Eden wandered in —
What then? Why, nothing, only,
Your inference therefrom!

The morning sun streams through the little kitchen’s  
wooden panes; its luminescence tempts me to forego coffee.  
But I don’t. The dark coffee scent melds with the birds’ 
chirping along the hidden acacia. Then, a small bird 
alights on the cross of the wooden clothesline.  
Its tiny head turns from side to side, then as if sensing me,  
it gazes at me through a window square.  
We ponder each other, then remember our manners,  
and it flies off into the clean, cold air.  

My Kiowa friends say a visit from a bird 
is the spirit of a departed loved one. 
I think again of Marie, my friend, my comadre –  
the many feast days, powwows, and trips we shared.  
We cruised down Taos’s one main street, 
and rushed to Smith’s grocery for last-minute necessities,  
or Walmart for the white cylinder candles for wakes.  
We hauled huge, bulging bags to the town dump. 

Oh, sister, this entire town brims with memories 
of our long sisterhood, since our early twenties  
when we were young mothers,  
but that was in the last century. 

This quiet casita is surrounded by tall stands  
of elm and cottonwood trees, their bare, brown 
branches stark against the deep, blue sky. 

Every other week, snow falls in thin waves 
onto the flat ochre houses  
that seem anchored to the ground. 
Outside of these thick adobe walls, a stillness settles upon everything. 
As memories drift all around, I gather ingredients for a stew, 
scents of coffee and toast linger around the arched doorway,  
and the warm air in the kitchen lightens the chopping of vegetables.  
Soon, the windowpanes are damp from the simmering stew. 

All there is now, is to wait, sip coffee, and watch the snow 
fall in layers on the roofs, trees, fences, and cars.   

I am in a serene cocoon of memories.  
All our conversations and laughter are silent now.  
Somewhere north of here, dogs bark playfully,  
probably romping in the fresh snow.  
Just up the road at the pueblo, your family gathers. 
They replenish the fire, stir pots of red chile  
and place potato salad and platters  
of sliced oven bread on the table. 

Twice on other travels a wolf stood on the periphery of lamplight.
Our eyes intensified in the silent distance between sanctity.
There is one who appreciates secondhand revelations of wolves.

Sparrow hawk waves fast hinges of small capture in its apex of watch.
Where are the absent coyotes of Willamina?
Winter-sleepy mice are slow.

The salmon pass the fishers’ drift into deadline.
The count is a button pushed in the rapture of instinctual homing.
An eye squint records the shrapnel glimpses of Chinook.

Our river’s low, as manly winds blur the edges of inland clouds.
Aspiring rain is a sleepy feminine whisper.
Grasses sweep patterns of mock celestial visitations.

Otter pelts feel soothingly moist in the rich depth of velvety pelage
Small bare edged ears are symbolic of ocean’s chill.
One secret otter strip is owned for future weaving.

Otter woven into a  ¹Ravenstail robe is royal and tide riddled.
The otter dances on prominent lineage hidden through survival.
Copper light resumes ceremony from absence to embrace our shoulders.

^{—after Alexander Lumans and Jennifer Ackerman}

Among them, a common language of alarm.

Also, rapture.

Know that when zebra finches felt the first pinch
of climate change, they chirped to their offspring, still shelled,
to warn, to insist, they hatch
                                                                         smaller and fiercer.
Dawn’s chorus is a peace-making operation.
The birds with the biggest eyes sing first.
                                                                         Thus light
is the first part of song.

Some birds create barriers
                                    of pinging notes—golden bells dangling

in the air, alarms and warnings. Does it matter

what kind of birds did this? They’re all dead now.

In bird language, there’s a call for mobbing, a call for fleeing.

                                   To avoid danger, sometimes you must approach it.

In the shell, a bird recognizes its parents’ voices.
In love, mates sing duets they invent together.
On death, the survivor must learn a new tune.

There are such things as universal truths.

                                   Some kites drop fire onto the earth to scare
                                                                                            up dinner. Some kites,

                                   dropping fire, taught humans their first warm meal.

Neither ice nor snow lived long enough
to hear the last bird sing—just wind,

which carried those notes as far as it could
before they slipped from its palms—

                                   There is a common language of alarm.

i.
           nacimos y morimos
we are born & we die
           es el ciclo de la vida
moving mountains of moments 
we begin again
falling drops of starlight 
we wash away the empire’s sins
the year 
that marked us but we cannot 
wash away 
the wind

ii.         for
our people who touch the land
work the soil / with determined
backs bent / eyes to the sky 
reclaim our heritage 
my urban mind a gray winter blizzard 
washed in blue tones / here in my homeland
remember a forever summer in my blood
my hips move in the reclaiming of the rhythm of a 
shovel that swings / this urban
jibara heart beat / beats strong here 
where i belong / home is soil beneath my fingernails
pebbles unearthed / pushed by my sweaty arms 
& in the palms of my hands where i hold
a full cup of faith

iii.         
when I die 
let me leave more 
than these verses in the wind

say / my breath / before it is vapor / forgotten
left something in the breeze / in the moonlight 
that eased someone else’s sorrow

when my skin blows away 
& my bones are one with the red clay
of my homeland, please say / i did something more 
than write words

1.
If you run for too long, you forget everything.
Even your limbs become invention. A fallacy of skin
you tell yourself you once had when you knew
how to be more, so birds are the stories you now tell
your flesh. You remind her of the Swift 
who flies for years, as if land is an impossible trick. You tell
her about the Sea Eagle from China lost
in America for years. Flying and flying and never
finding home. You remember her the ʻAlauahio, the ʻŌʻō,
the Olomaʻo, the Kākāwahie, the ʻĀkepa, the Nukupuʻu
the ʻŌʻū, the Mamo, the ʻUla-ʻai-hawane, the Poʻo-uli, 
the Kāmaʻo, the ʻAmaui, the birds, the birds,
the birds. You remember her all the birds 
who had to be more
to be.

2.
This morning I am unsure how
a bird exists when she has been seen only
under glass for more than fifty years. Her feathers
a feeble reminder of what she could be. Diminished 
to a hush of keratin and collagen. This bird
once shook the forest with her color.

3.
This morning I am not sure how
I am still here. Daybreak—               
just another process of shedding
of peeling back to meat
with no     new      skin to shelter.

Every breath, a surprise.
The heart beats still.
But how—how do we quiet 
these too loud bones
when our seams are worn 
by so much running?

4.
When you finally stop
you still feel your insides running.
Those involuntary tissues scrambling
to burst through your surfaces. What
would you do to let them free? When all of you
is full of run, you imagine yourself feathers. 
There is a bird inside you pushing 
at all your cracks. The punctures of vanes 
are just more places for you to breathe. 
This bird inside you would know 
how to draw breath. This bird inside you 
would know the song struggling 
in your throat. What will you do 
to let this bird free? What will you do 
to find all the songs
you should sing?

5.
Today we remember the Kākāwahie.
we remember the ʻAlauahio, the ʻŌʻō,
the Olomaʻo, the ʻĀkepa, the Nukupuʻu
the ʻŌʻū, the Mamo, the ʻUla-ʻai-hawane,
the Poʻo-uli, the Kāmaʻo, the ʻAmaui.

Today we remember our body
before we severed our own wings
just so we could hide
from the man
in the story
who would pin
all our wings 
to the ground.

^{Zion says, “The LORD has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.” Can a 
woman forget her baby, or disown the child of her womb? Though she might 
forget, I never could forget you.—Isaiah 49:14–15} 

^{“What It’s Like to Lose Your Entire Memory.”—Cosmopolitan}

You don’t remember anything.
How I formed you in your mother’s womb;
nursed you; bathed you; taught you to talk;

led you to springs of water?
I sang your name before you were born.
I’m singing your name now.

You’re clueless as an infant.
When I tell you to shout for joy,
you hear a bicycle, or a cat.

Sometimes, memories of me come back
like children you forgot you had:
a garden; a bride; an image of  your mother,

a best friend, a brother, or a cop, or snow, or afternoon.
Whose are these? you wonder.
Then you forget, and feel forgotten,

like an infant who falls asleep
at the breast
and wakes up hungry again.

Your mother might forget you, child,
but I never forget.
Your name is engraved

on the palms of my hands.
I shower you with examples of my love—
bees and birds, librarians and life skills,

emotions, sunlight, compassion.
Nothing connects.
Every dawn, every generation,

I have to teach you again:
this is water; this is darkness;
this is a body

fitting your description;
that’s a crush;
this is an allergic reaction.

This is your anger.
This is mine.
This is me

reminding you to eat.
Turn off the stove.
Take your medication.

This is the realization
that I am yours and you are mine. This is you
forgetting.

^{for Alex T.}

            a golden shovel after a line in ‘Gitanjali 73’ by Tagore  

The plant trimming requires no  
less than its water to be changed weekly. I   
ask my friend who gifted it to me: when will  
I be able to transfer it into soil? She has never 
told me anything but the truth. I don’t shut 
the window blinds now; my Plant-Friend loves the 
sun too much. I’ve been leaving the doors  
open too; the spirits flit more freely now. Yes, of  
course I’m afraid of death, but no less so my  
own life. A friend can bring you back to sweeter senses.

How to begin the story without being obvious:
the wet face, eyes swollen dim, the swallowed
moan … Who cares and Who cares, you ask. We all have
our pain, and it is so bloody boring, so obvious. But 
that is the point: there is a sword, and we know
it is a sword, but despite our knowing we accept
the dual. What remains curious is our umbrage
when the tip of the blade enters. We are shocked. Why 
do we never believe it will go through the skin,
that the skin, ephemeral as a cloud, does nothing to protect
the heart? I dream of Pushkin,  
in my arms. Thrust through. I give him my breast.
A man who would never have loved me.
I kiss the tight curls on top of his head. It is the moment 
after his duel for another’s love, another’s honor.
Being me, I believe I can save him. I can’t. 
When I wake from this dream he is dead.
But the dream repeats itself. Every dusk,
the longing. Every daybreak the loss.

I burned my life, that I might find 
A passion wholly of the mind, 
Thought divorced from eye and bone, 
Ecstasy come to breath alone. 
I broke my life, to seek relief 
From the flawed light of love and grief.

With mounting beat the utter fire 
Charred existence and desire. 
It died low, ceased its sudden thresh.
I found unmysterious flesh—
Not the mind’s avid substance—still
Passionate beyond the will.

the way that soap loves an airborne virus. 
Wants nothing more than to whisk it all away. Half fragile 
as water, half hydrophobic wildchild. Doing it daily

as thirst trap. Posing in the fat of fruit. in the lipid 
of a milking cow. It’s unfair to say

it’s afraid of anything. Hunting virus by riding hydro. 
Mobbing the scene in micelle. Trailing pond for a bond. 
Shooting its shot near the nearest swarm of greasy tail. How 
good it is at pulling every germ. Every dirty little frag. 
Every bacterial bevvy. 
                                         Loving it all 
to its silky death. to its silty bottom. to its graywater demise. 
How it hungers the virus until neither function. Melting its thick 
heart and ripping it all away.

Little soap bar playa. Little Dionysian pump of cupidity.

                           Oh, to desire virus 
                           to death. To take it dizzy 
and broken down through the falls. 
Slow soaping the sick

from our living, 
wet hands.

The sun holds all the earth and all the sky 
From the gold throne of this midsummer day. 
In the soft air the shadow of a sigh
Breathes on the leaves and scarcely makes them sway. 
The wood lies silent in the shimmering heat, 
Save where the insects make a lazy drone, 
And ever and anon from some tree near, 
             A dove’s enamoured moan, 
Or distant rook’s faint cawing harsh and sweet, 
Comes dimly floating to my listening ear.

Right in the wood’s deep heart I lay me down, 
And look up at the sky between the leaves, 
Through delicate lace I see her deep blue gown. 
Across a fern a scarlet spider weaves 
From branch to branch a slender silver thread,
And hangs there shining in the white sunbeams, 
A ruby tremulous on a streak of light. 
            And high above my head 
One spray of honeysuckle sweats and dreams, 
With one wild honey-bee for acolyte.

My nest is all untrod and virginal, 
And virginal the path that led me here, 
For all along the grass grew straight and tall, 
And live things rustled in the thicket near:
And briar rose stretched out to sweet briar rose 
Wild slender arms, and barred the way to me 
With many a flowering arch, rose-pink or white,
            As bending carefully. 
Leaving unbroken all their blossoming bows, 
I passed along, a reverent neophyte.

The air is full of soft imaginings,
They float unseen beneath the hot sunbeams,
Like tired moths on heavy velvet wings.
They droop above my drowsy head like dreams.
The hum of bees, the murmuring of doves.
The soft faint whispering of unnumbered trees.
Mingle with unreal things, and low and deep
            From visionary groves, 
Imagined lutes make voiceless harmonies. 
And false flutes sigh before the gates of sleep.

O rare sweet hour! O cup of golden wine! 
The night of these my days is dull and dense, 
And stars are few, be this the anodyne!
Of many woes the perfect recompense.
I thought that I had lost for evermore
The sense of this ethereal drunkenness, 
This fierce desire to live, to breathe, to be;
            But even now, no less 
Than in the merry noon that danced before 
My tedious night, I taste its ecstasy.

Taste, and remember all the summer days 
That lie, like golden reflections in the lake 
Of vanished years, unreal but sweet always; 
Soft luminous shadows that I may not take 
Into my hands again, but still discern 
Drifting like gilded ghosts before my eyes. 
Beneath the waters of forgotten things.
            Sweet with faint memories,

And mellow with old loves that used to burn 
Dead summer days ago, like fierce red kings.
And this hour too must die, even now the sun
Droops to the sea, and with untroubled feet
The quiet evening comes: the day is done.
The air that throbbed beneath the passionate heat
Grows calm and cool and virginal again.
The colour fades and sinks to sombre tones.
As when in youthful cheeks a blush grows dim.
            Hushed are the monotones 
Of doves and bees, and the long flowery lane 
Rustles beneath the wind in playful whim.

Gone are the passion and the pulse that beat 
With fevered strokes, and gone the unseen things 
That clothed the hour with shining raiment meet 
To deck enchantments and imaginings. 
No joy is here but only neutral peace 
And loveless languor and indifference, 
And faint remembrance of lost ecstasy.
            The darkening shades increase. 
My dreams go out like tapers—I must hence. 
Far off I hear Night calling to the sea.

Hold on, they said, but she was tiny and let
the kite go flying above tears and treetops.
The kite had a will of its own, and its will
was wind which carried it the way love carries
surrender and forgiveness. I was right behind
and watched until hope was a speck and gone.
I’d have let it swoop me up the way a bird
of prey lifts a rabbit or a mouse, not afraid
to rub my nose in sky and roll about in deep
fields of snow far above cirrostratus.
Not afraid to let bliss devour me whole.
Or grief, if I must live my forever in orbit
with the Wolf Moon as it prowls night
after night howling for the wilderness we lost.

Wearied of its own turning,
Distressed with its own busy restlessness,
Yearning to draw the circumferent pain—
The rim that is dizzy with speed—
To the motionless centre, there to rest,
The wheel must strain through agony
On agony contracting, returning
Into the core of steel.
    And at last the wheel has rest, is still,
Shrunk to an adamant core,
Fulfilling its will in fixity.
But the yearning atoms, as they grind
Closer and closer, more and more
Fiercely together, beget
A flaming fire upward leaping,
Billowing out in a burning,
Passionate, fierce desire to find
The infinite calm of the mother’s breast.
And there the flame is a Christ-child sleeping,
Bright, tenderly radiant;
All bitterness lost in the infinite
Peace of the mother’s bosom.
But death comes creeping in a tide
Of slow oblivion, till the flame in fear
Wakes from the sleep of its quiet brightness 
And burns with a darkening passion and pain,
Lest, all forgetting in quiet, it perish.
And as it burns and anguishes it quickens,
Begetting once again the wheel that yearns—
Sick with its speed—for the terrible stillness
Of the adamant core and the steel-hard chain.
And so once more
Shall the wheel revolve, till its anguish cease
In the iron anguish of fixity;
Till once again 
Flame billows out to infinity,
Sinking to a sleep of brightness
In that vast oblivious peace. 

^{—after “Horse” (1980) by Deborah Butterfield}

It looks as if it has only now  
risen from the stall bed, straw

clinging to its body the color of mud, 
but we know from the artist 

it is made of rag paper pulp  
cracking, fibers like small hairs,

ribbons of bamboo leaves, steel  
and chicken wire to look like 

an animal bending down to drink   
perhaps from a bucket of water.

A hoof implies the presence of  
the whole horse. A saddle implies 

a horse and a rider. Where are you  
taking me? In the barn, they crane 

their necks to see who’s coming.  
I feel the weight, the gesture in 

my own body. You become  
the horse: Bonfire. White Crane

A horse is a prayer. 
The meaning changes every day.

My father read a mountain aloud.

Opened to a page 
where a green bird lands on a thunderclap.

Named for the billowing hands of 
brittle blue flowers.

As if the unfinished poetry of the paraffin

is pulled aside like scenery, 
so that I may write by the only light I know.

My father read only his one life and recited 
the last line over and over.

The book is written in giant letters of fog 
that wander like goats across the alpine pastures.

The moon is dog-eared as if the treetops looking up 
have studied the idea of love too much.

On a page with some scattered pine needles, 
a voice goes on calling out to me.

My father learned to read 
in a one-room schoolhouse,

and never read a poem.

A little herd of lightning 
gets spoken out loud in the dark.

Change 
is scenic and sudden.

One year, I came home 
and all the leaves fell off my father.

After that, 
he was winter.

^{translated from the Spanish by Andrés Fernández}

^{(to my sister)}

(the deafening
sound
of the sea
comes 
between
us both)

I say to her:
I think
we’re
drowned

she replies:
no
We’re not
drowned

I say to her:
we’re lying
side by side
at the bottom
of the sea

she replies:
no
We are standing
on the shore

I say to her:
I truly
believe
we’ve
already drowned

she replies:
no
We are
breathing
just fine

I say to her:
for me
no 
air
comes
in

she replies:
I have air
for both of us

desacuerdo

 ^{(a mi hermana)} 

(el rugido 
ensordecedor
del mar 
se interpone
entre 
las dos)
  
yo le digo:
creo 
que estamos 
ahogadas
  
ella responde:
no 
No estamos 
ahogadas

yo le digo:
yacemos 
a la par 
en el fondo 
del mar

ella responde:
no 
Estamos de pie 
en la orilla
  
yo le digo:
de verdad 
creo 
que ya 
nos ahogamos
  
ella responde:
no 
Estamos 
respirando 
muy bien

yo le digo:
a mí 
no 
me 
entra 
aire
  
ella responde:
Yo tengo aire
para las dos

^{translated from the Spanish by Janet Hendrickson}

That year, we knew the sky existed 
because we believed in the storm, 
but we never saw the sky.

Shut in from morning until night, 
we couldn’t stop talking about what we’d do after. 
The sea hanging from our tongues. Extinct horses 
went up and down the hills we claimed to know.

After a while, the wind changed, 
it went from west to east and didn’t stop, 
the street filled with rooks and wild dogs, 
and the light became a cliff at day’s end.

And we were each afraid, 
afraid of the noise of the neighbors  
and the absence of noise, 
of the huge tail of the rat descending from the roof, 
of the fighting of the rooks outside

afraid of the children’s insistent question, 
which was always the same, and afraid of memory, 
since we had started to confuse the old days 
with what we imagined lie ahead 
and soon, we no longer knew whether life was just a wish.

We lived a day that went beyond its limits 
like a train longer than the city where it stops.

That year, we survived for seven hundred days. 
Thousands of hours of cold for a single night.

Invierno

Aquel año sabíamos que existía el cielo  
porque creíamos en la tempestad, 
pero jamás veíamos el cielo. 

Encerrados de la mañana a la noche,  
no dejábamos de hablar sobre lo que haríamos más tarde.  
El mar pendía de la lengua. Caballos extintos 
bajaban y subían las colinas que decíamos conocer.

Luego de un tiempo, el viento cambió,  
fue del oeste al este sin detenerse, 
la calle se llenó de grajos y perros salvajes, 
y la luz se volvió un precipicio al final del día.

Y cada uno de nosotros tuvo miedo,  
miedo del ruido de los vecinos y la ausencia de ruido, 
de la cola enorme de la rata que bajaba del techo, 
de la pelea de los grajos afuera, 

miedo de la insistente pregunta de los niños,  
que era siempre la misma, y miedo de la memoria, 
pues empezamos a confundir los días antiguos 
con lo que imaginábamos para más adelante, 
y pronto, ya no supimos si la vida era solo un deseo.

Vivíamos un día que se salía de sus márgenes  
como un tren más extenso que la ciudad a donde llega.

Aquel año, sobrevivimos por setecientos días. 
Miles de horas de frío para una sola noche. 

^{translated from the Spanish by Anthony Geist}

White valleys 
            left behind: 
            they begin to turn into 
rocks, 
            pine trees 
and eagles. 
            Hundreds of years on the road. 
On the way 
            my parents died. 
On the way 
            my children will be born.

Los inmigrantes

Valles blancos 
            han quedado atrás:  
            empiezan a transformarse  
en rocas, 
            pinos  
y águilas. 
            Cientos de años de viaje.  
En el camino 
            han muerto mis padres.  
En el camino 
            nacerán mis hijos. 

Split the trunk of an ancient one.  
Count the rings like hidden weddings brought to light.  
Know I’ve been wanting to come to die here,  
for the longest while. My brown limbs as roots.

White men I’ve longed for have walked face-first  
into the rainforest and misunderstood it so 
beautifully. Sonnets to the otherness they find dripping  
from the stems of their long fingers.

After I fuck them, will you eat them raw? 

Trees, I want to die and die in you. No other arms. 
No other branches coroneting the sky.  
No other aviaries for corbeau and kiskadee. Kiss me. 

Before I was awaiting death in the life I hold now,  
plump and feral as a grass-fed lamb, I was 

Yours. I planned how I would construct my funerary bower  
in your arms, gird myself all over 
with liana, a blanket of sphagnum moss plucked from  
your bedroom floor. My eyelids green.

^{translated from the Spanish by Katherine M. Hedeen & Víctor Rodríguez Núñez}

I am a descendent of stillness 
and sailors still in motion, 
a brew of saltpeter and blackbird song. 
In just one bloody wound collide 
impatience and calm. 
If I fall silent and words ripen 
it’s the voice of an olive tree in its quiet seed. 
I am the hesitation between hideout and sword, 
the yellow in all the world’s traffic lights. 
In the future I’ll serve you coffee and worship  
you—like an icon—in a picture frame. 

A dos sangres

Vengo de una ascendencia de quietud 
y marineros todavía en movimiento; 
mezclo el salitre del mar con el canto de un mirlo. 
En una sola herida de sangre colisiona 
la serenidad y el desasosiego. 
Si enmudezco y maduran las palabras 
es la voz de un olivo en su callada semilla. 
Soy la incertidumbre entre el escondite o la espada, 
luz amarillenta en los semáforos del mundo, 
quiero servir tu café en el futuro o adorarte 
—como a un icono—en un portarretrato.

^{translated from the French by Youmna Chamieh}

We will no longer be able to think (breathe, words like silence)
Of the too great complication of what it is to live.
The poem will be, more and more blind, nothing but words:
No one will be able to truly hear them.
Something else will come within ruins of time and friendship,
It won’t even be worth saying that we must die,
We will die.

Un jour écrire deviendra trop difficile.

On ne pourra plus penser (respirer, les mots comme du silence)
À la trop grande complication de ce que c’est vivre.
Le poème sera, de plus en plus aveugle, plus rien que des mots :
Personne qui pourra les entendre pour de vrai.
Quelque chose d’autre viendra dans des ruines de temps et d’amitié,
Ce sera même pas la peine de dire qu’il faut mourir,
On mourra.

^{To a Friend.}

The shrine is vowed to freedom, but, my friend, 
Freedom is but a means to gain an end. 
Freedom should build the temple, but the shrine 
Be consecrate to thought still more divine. 
The human bliss which angel hopes foresaw 
Is liberty to comprehend the law. 
Give, then, thy book a larger scope and frame, 
Comprising means and end in Truth’s great name.

^{translated from the Turkish by Nell Wright}

My mother dries figs
with her blue-veined hands.
My mother smiles at walnuts
as though time in the heart never started.

SANKİ

Annem incir kurutuyor

Mavi damarlı elleriyle.

Annem cevizlere gülümsüyor

Sanki yürekte zaman hiç başlamamış.

^{translated from the Greek by Jackson Watson}

Here the days don’t dissolve in air 
they fall into the water 
shaping their own shell 
a sheen of separation. 
A hawk flies over summer’s body 
diving again, again 
feeding and drunk from the fall. 
There’s nothing here 
but manic wind alone and stones 
and sea 
a senseless promise 
sharpens our lust with the moon’s blade.

When I arrived here, in the landscape of endings, 
the wind entered my mouth with so much rage 
as if I were its only vessel 
until all my words vanished.

Each tree receives the wind’s gust differently 
some suffer, others—again—resist 
(I’ve met a palm tree that birthed the wind,
then sent it in every direction) 
others shiver all over and change colors. 
I, of course, am not a tree 
I sat down and wore the wind’s coat 
I stooped my head and looked at the ground 
through its cracks, thyme’s roots 
             & their hieroglyphics 
struggled to enter the light. 
Then the words came back.

Ταίναρο

Εδώ οι μέρες δεν διαλύονται στον αέρα 
πέφτουν μέσα στο νερό
σχηματίζοντας μια καταδική τουςστιβάδα 
Μια επιφάνεια διαχωρισμού. 
Ένα γεράκι πετάει πάνω από το σώμα τουκαλοκαιριού 
Βουτάει ξανά και ξανά 
Τρέφεται και μεθάει από την πτώση. 
Δεν έχει τίποτα εδώ
Μόνο τρελλό αέρα και πέτρες
Και θάλασσα 
Μια αναίτια υπόσχεση 
Ακονίζει τη λαγνεία μας με τη λάμα τουφεγγαριού.

Όταν έφτασα εδώ για πρώτη φορά, στοτοπίο του τέλους, 
ο αέρας έμπαινε στο στόμα μου μετέτοια μανία 
σα να ήμουν ο μοναδικός αποδέκτης του
Μέχρι όλες οι λέξεις μου ναεξαφανιστούν.

Κάθε δέντρο υποδέχεται διαφορετικά τονάνεμο 
Άλλα υποφέρουν, άλλα πάλιαντιστέκονται 
(έχω συναντήσει μια φοινικιά πουγεννούσε τον άνεμο και τον διένειμε
προς κάθε κατεύθυνση) 
άλλα τρέμουν ολόκληρα κι αλλάζουνχρώματα. 
Εγώ βέβαια δεν είμαι δέντρο 
Κάθισα κάτω και τον φόρεσα παλτό. 
Έσκυψα το κεφάλι μου και κοίταξα τοχώμα. 
Μέσα από τις ρωγμές του, οι ρίζες τουθυμαριού 
με τα ιερογλυφικά τους πάσχιζαν ναβγουν στο φως. 
Τότε οι λέξεις ξαναγύρισαν.

^{—after Akhmadulina}

Some things you don’t come back from.
The body carries on. Of late
it even travels, basks in light.
But knock and there’s no one home.

(How did I love you? With the taste
of iron on my tongue. Try again.
How did I love you? Like a man
destroying what he tries to save.)

The head still does light labor.
But often both the hands fall slack,
and all five senses, in a flock,
go south to weather winter.

As a child I made things 
out of clay—a pig who

could not be eaten, a mule  
who refused to carry

anything other than a pig 
who could not be eaten.

They were companion 
pieces. They kept each

other company, and me. 
We kept each other’s

secrets: what flesh can 
do with clay, what clay

can do that flesh can’t. 
I was a small child who made

small decisions. I made big  
people angry. I made them

confused. I 
refuse, I refuse.

Who hears the humming 
of rocks at great height, 
the long steady drone
of granite holding together, 
the strumming of obsidian 
to itself? I go among 
the stones stooping 
and pecking like a 
sparrow, imagining
the glacier’s final push 
resounding still. In 
a freezing mountain 
stream, my hand opens 
scratched and raw and 
flutters strangely, 
more like an animal 
or wild blossom in wind 
than any part of me. Great 
fields of stone 
stretching away under 
a slate sky, their single 
flower the flower 
of my right hand. 
                              Last night
the fire died into itself 
black stick by stick 
and the dark came out 
of my eyes flooding 
everything. I 
slept alone and dreamed 
of you in an old house 
back home among 
your country people,
among the dead, not 
any living one besides 
yourself. I woke 
scared by the gasping 
of a wild one, scared 
by my own breath, and 
slowly calmed 
remembering your weight 
beside me all these 
years, and here and 
there an eye of stone 
gleamed with the warm light 
of an absent star. 
                               Today
in this high clear room 
of the world, I squat 
to the life of rocks 
jewelled in the stream 
or whispering 
like shards. What fears 
are still held locked 
in the veins till the last 
fire, and who will calm 
us then under a gold sky 
that will be all of earth? 
Two miles below on the burning 
summer plains, you go 
about your life one 
more day. I give you 
almond blossoms 
for your hair, your hair 
that will be white, I give 
the world my worn-out breath 
on an old tune, I give 
it all I have 
and take it back again.

You won’t feel like this forever, unless

           forever is here. Follow the dark blue

blades of kale, the flat dials of sunflowers

           leading back to speech, or its underside.  

Love translated you across an ocean

           & now you cannot really come away 

or say how, exactly, your love began. 

           Was it music in the mouth, or weeping

in the blood? The ancestral body splits
           
           into water & seeds, pure syllables.  

like everyone, I love children, 
their fat leg rolls, their mussed hair,
their little sneakers lighting up the summer.
once, I was small like that, a curious wandering eye, 
a bell or pinwheel turning my head,
the gap between my mother’s teeth
beckoning me back.

somewhere swimming inside me is a question
I don’t want to answer. it’s not my name I hear,
but something else, drowning in its own fluid.
a girl on the ferry smiles at me. I smile back—
& it seems to mean the world to her.