my ancestors rose and cheered.
From their ancient graves,

pairs of arms rose to make the wave.
Every burial site, a stadium and,

for every one of his at-bats
Mayon Volcano spat a puff of smoke

visible for miles. Children in T-shirts
with the number 50, hand-scrawled by Sharpies

would run into the streets and clang
on metal pans calling all to feast

and when Benny’s cleats dug into the box,
the little cloud of dust rising from his spikes

would drift across continents, into the living room
of every Filipino, issuing a sneeze

which would be followed by a blessing.
The diaspora, a flood of blessings,

watching the orange, blue, and white uniforms
pixelated into millions of screens.

Tens of thousands of nurses held their breaths
when they looked up between shifts

and saw him rest the bat on his shoulder
staring down the pitcher. When Benny Agbayani

was a Met, whole families, once torn apart
by distance held each other close, wrapped

together tightly in the embrace of phone cords,
the web of telephone lines crisscrossing the nation.

Each long distance call the shimmering pulse of a wrist
bracing for the recoil of the bat making contact.

When Benny fielded fly balls we’d all look
into the sun for the speck of something—

something to ease us into the heartbeat
of Americana where it was always

summer and the lawn markings
formed grids visible from space.

When Benny Agbayani was a Met we thought
the organ’s roar was for us and the syncopated applause

put us into a rhythm in tune to our hearts.
When Benny Agbayani put his mitt to the ground

to stop a daisy cutter, millions of us put our ears
to the earth to hear the rumblings

of what we hoped would be thousands of footsteps,
following his path. But instead they were galloping

towards home. We’d raise the brim of our caps
and nod our chins at a cool breeze

or the smell of fryer oil. And when Shea
sang in one voice “B-B-B-Benny and the Mets”

we stood and put our hands to our hearts.
We rocked back and forth on our heels

watching the strike zone get smaller
and smaller. Watched as the sun made

our shadows grow and we waited until the roster
made room for us in the show, now and in the ever after.

Got up and dressed up
      and went out & got laid
Then died and got buried
      in a coffin in the grave, 
Man—
      Yet everything is perfect,
Because it is empty, 
Because it is perfect
      with emptiness, 
Because it's not even happening.

Everything
Is Ignorant of its own emptiness—
Anger
Doesn't like to be reminded of fits—

You start with the Teaching
      Inscrutable of the Diamond
And end with it, your goal
      is your startingplace, 
No race was run, no walk
      of prophetic toenails
Across Arabies of hot
      meaning—you just
      numbly don't get there

When they first
glimpsed Creation, it was only
                         half-lit.

Half-lit,
as in, only half-clear—
that night, they discerned
                                      and imagined.

In the mind’s waters,
a blurring,                   a refraction.
There, we were brimming,
we were multitudes,

but they saw our darkness
and named us Dark.

^{translated from the Spanish by Alice Stone Blackwell}

Black as the wing of Mystery thine hair,
Dark as a “Never” where deep sorrow lies,
As a farewell, or as the words “Who knows?”
Yet is there something darker still—thine eyes!

Two musing wizards are those eyes of thine;
Sphinxes asleep in shadow in the South;
Two beautiful enigmas, wondrous fair;
Yet is there something fairer still—thy mouth!

Thy mouth! Ah, yes! Thy mouth, divinely formed
For love’s expression and to be love’s goal,
Shaped for love’s warm communion—thy young mouth! 
Yet is there something better still—thy soul.

Thy soul, retiring, silent, brimming o’er 
With pity and with tenderness, I deem
Deep as the ocean, the unsounded sea; 
Yet is there something deeper still—thy dream!

Á Leonor

    Tu cabellera es negra como el ala
del misterio; tan negra como un lóbrego
jamás, como un adiós, como un «¡quién sabe!»
    Pero hay algo más negro aún: ¡tus ojos!

    Tus ojos son dos magos pensativos,
dos esfinges que duermen en la sombra,
dos enigmas muy bellos . . . Pero hay algo,
pero hay algo más bello aún: tu boca.

    ¡Tu boca! ¡oh, sí!; tu boca, hecha divina-
mente para el amor, para la cálida
comunión del amor, tu boca joven;
pero hay algo mejor aún: ¡tu alma!

    Tu alma recogida, silenciosa,
de piedades tan hondas como el piélago,
de ternuras tan hondas . . .
                                         Pero hay algo,
pero hay algo más hondo aún: ¡tu ensueño!

He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy
He who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise

Long, too long America,


Traveling roads all even and peaceful you learn'd from joys and prosperity only,


But now, ah now, to learn from crises of anguish, advancing, grappling with direst fate and recoiling not,


And now to conceive and show to the world what your children en-masse really are,


(For who except myself has yet conceiv'd what your children en-masse really are?)