All the king’s horses and all the king’s men. . . .
If only poetry had made nothing happen!
If only the president had listened to Auden!
Faith Chaney, Lulú Pérez, Sunghee Chen—
there’s a list as long as an epic poem
of folks who’ll swear a poem has never done
a thing for them . . . except . . . perhaps adjust
the sunset view one cloudy afternoon,
which made them see themselves or see the world
in a different light—degrees of change so small
only a poem registers them at all.
That’s why they can be trusted, why poems
might save us from what happens in the world.
READING FOR PLEASURE
When I read a book I love, I fall in love
with the author, I can’t help it, the voice
even if centuries old pierces my heart
as if along with every reader, I
were being threaded through a needle’s eye
that’s being used to stitch the lot of us
into an uncommon humanity
of lovers for whom books are love letters
posted to every man, woman, and child,
but penned specifically to each of us.
How many times haven’t I stroked the sheets
of my Riverside Shakespeare, or pressed my lips
to my dog-eared Dickinson! I pine for Keats
whenever I read his odes, and I confess
I want to be Maud when I reread Yeats.
Each time, I teach George Herbert, I caress
the page on which my favorite poem appears
as if to soothe the weary minister
who asks, Who’d have thought my shrivel’d hart
could have recovered greenesse? I did, George!
Perhaps I picked up this desire from them
of wanting my readers to fall in love
with hairbands, willow trees, lawn ornaments:
this odd and wondrous world which would be lost
without our recreations—those who write,
but principally those who read for pleasure,
breathing life into dead characters.
And now, like them, I lie on these cold sheets,
waiting to be a woman once again.
You who are reading these words come closer.
DIRECT ADDRESS
I love those poems where writers turn to me,
addressing me as you—and though I know
that thousands upon thousands of readers
have trod his Leaves of Grass, I’m still convinced
it’s me Whitman’s instructing when he writes,
Look for me under your bootsoles.
The signs of those we love are everywhere,
their ghostly faces rushing by on trains
or forming in the clouds; nurseries belie
the stony closures in the graveyard.
That is the only way the dead come back
as far as I can tell. My grandfather
surfaces in the locust’s gnarled trunk,
so comforting to touch his face again.
The bulldog wears my fourth grade teacher’s scowl;
I back away as when I was a child.
Pachelbel’s canon calms like Chucha’s arms.
And what a shock to find in a Vuillard
my grandmother peering out as if to catch
the lazy maids at their shenanigans.
I’d like to think this is how I’ll come back:
lines in a poem that spring upon your lips,
though who the author was has slipped your mind.
It’s agency, not fame, I want: my words
at work, a slap awake, a soothing hand.
But since death’s likely to transform my wish,
there’s no direct address that I can give
where you should look for me. So you (yes, you!),
keep watch! I could be under your bootsoles
or inside this poem already inside you.
PASSING ON
Emily in one hand, Walt in the other,
that’s how I learned my craft, struggling
to navigate my own way between them
and get to where I wanted to end up:
some place dead center in the human heart.
I’ve had an odyssey with both along:
Emily with her slant sense of directions;
and rowdy Walt, so loud and in my face,
I’ve had to stuff his mouth with leaves of grass
at times to hear my own song of myself!
Such mixtures are my forte after all,
Since I prefer the hyphenated voice,
a little of this, a little of that,
my tías gossiping while rolling dough,
my mother malapropping her clichés
(Don’t try to judge a forest by its leaves),
Gladys intoning her sad boleros
as she sweeps out the house of childhood,
Milagros with her saucy salsa songs,
my godmother telling her rosary beads.
And most of these voices not in English,
some in Spanish, and some in that first tongue
when all I knew was heartbeat and the hum
of Mami’s murmuring blood becoming mine.
And now this mix of voices sails out—
a Tower of Babel crammed in Noah’s ark—
into the future silences beyond
where I can go and where those yet unborn
might read what’s left of me, this voice
I now pass on, my own, and not my own.
Keeping Watch
EL SERENO
Nights of my childhood, he made his rounds,
the old sereno with his dim flashlight
whose batteries were always dying out.
I found out why: the maids would borrow them
to play their little radio all day long.
(How else keep up their spirits but with song?)
In their distraction, I would slip away
to the sereno’s hut, waiting for him
to wake up midday, grim-eyed, sour-faced.
“What do you want?” He’d shoo me off to play.
Even back then, I was impressed by him:
his wise-man face; his narrowed, piercing eyes;
his lack of interest in frivolities—
untangling my kite string, baiting my line.
He was worn out with carrying the load
of all he’d seen during his dark patrols.
Some nights, he’d stop—I’d hold my breath
until his footsteps passed—All’s well. Dream on.
Sereno was the name I knew him by.
Serene and dew of night, his homonyms.
A lifetime later, I’ll wake up mid-night,
to utter silence—2 A.M.! That time
when our eternal, mortal loneliness;
the losses that await us or have come
steal like intruders into our sleepless minds.
“What do I want?” the ancient question lurks.
Serenity, to bear the heavy load
with grace. High spirits to inspire the heart
with song and not alarm the ones I love—
those dreamers who will soon be waking up.
LOOKING UP
Why is it we like looking at the sky?
In part, of course, we’re checking weather:
masses of dark clouds or a stormy haze
or breakthrough blue can alter a day’s plan.
But even after we’ve gotten the gist
of mist or drizzle, we keep looking up—
perhaps a habit copied from the Greeks
who used the heavens as a crystal ball,
foretelling future from the flights of birds
or leaves blown in the air and spinning down.
In the more recent past, aston
omers
studying the stars predicted character.
And not counting the Moslems who look east,
and Buddhists whose third eye is looking in,
most other world religions aim their prayers
skyward where a Higher Power resides.
I’m no exception, I’m still suffering
from that residual spiritual tic
of looking upward for more certainty,
a dove descending, angels winging down.
But though I’m scavenging for the divine,
what holds my gaze are signs we put up there:
some child’s runaway kite, a jet’s brief glint,
light poles and traffic lights, the Goodyear Blimp—
the margins of our human drama where
we battle desperately for some control,
which we are bound to lose, the kite string snaps,
a patch of color sails into the blue,
beautiful in its insignificance.
We watch it as it dances out of view.
WHAT WE ASK FOR
The only thing that Jesus ever asked,
of a personal nature, was on the night
before he died: he asked three apostles,
James, John, and Peter, to stay up with him.
My soul is sorrowing to the point of death.
It was his humanness that needed them.
What else to ask for since he had to die?
Three times he asked, three times they fell asleep,
until sweet Jesus finally said, Sleep on.
It’s done. My hour has already come.
The Sufi mystic Rumi urges us,
Do not go back to sleep. And Lord Krishna
rallies the sleepy Arjuna to arise
and join the fray of an awakened life.
Buddha has taught us to breathe in, breathe out,
in order to stay mindful, stay awake
watching our current incarnation roll:
¡Latina poet! Next time around, who knows?
It seems the great religions all agree
in what they ask of followers: Stay up!
As an insomniac, I understand
the loneliness of waking late at night,
wandering the house, checking on loved ones’ sleep,
covering a child, filling a water glass.
Outside a cold rain falls. This night could be
the last of a doomed planet gone to sleep.
My soul is sorrowing because I know
that staying up won’t save a blessed thing.
But oh, sweet Jesus! given what must come,
what else to ask or give our companions?
WHAT WAS IT THAT I WANTED?
What was it that I wanted? I forget—
to have a place called home, these quiet hills
I look on as I write, the trees I grew
as seedlings now full-blown and full of birds,
sparrows and thrushes singing as I work;
even the snow beating against the panes—
I wanted that. And you, dear one, stopping
outside my study door, then going on . . .
that loving pause that longs but still respects
my solitude—I wanted you most of all!
I wanted a voice, oh yes, one that would tell
simply but with the mute heart’s eloquence
who I was, what my brief time on earth
was all about. And more, there was always more:
I wanted to be wanted, to belong
in school, country, gender, neighborhood—
one of the good girls everybody loves,
the heroine of the story of my life
with a happy ending. I wanted that—
who knows why anymore?—but yes, I did.
Some things I wanted but I couldn’t get
I wanted not to want—my mother’s love,
that look of urgent cherishing I’ve glimpsed
in the soft eyes of dogs and the dying.
I wanted Papi’s love unhinged from shame,
his own and mine. I wanted not to feel
that yearning for the child I never had.
What else was it I wanted? I forget.
Or could it be the longing that I want
To make me stretch beyond the lot I got?
KEEPING WATCH
Watching the baby, I think of the dying,
of their grimaces, of how they throw their arms
or kick their legs, struggling to free themselves
from some invisible entanglement.
I think of my concentration on each breath
they’re laboring to take, pacing my own
to theirs as if to help with the hard work
of staying alive. I stand by, hoping
to hear their voice saying my name
one last time—as if I were watching the baby,
listening for the slightest sound of sense:
a doubled syllable; a wail that means
Pick me up! I’m bored; or outraged scream,
I want my mother now! I want my milk!
Watching the dying, I’m struck by the same look
as in the baby’s eyes, taking me in
without a judgment in the world as if
they’re simply curious as to who I am,
a naked look which I return, Oh yes,
I see you, too. We are here together.
Watching them both, I think about myself,
how similar I feel, same helplessness,
same tenderness, same forgiveness for all
that’s over and to come, all eyes, all ears.
to feel its living warmth against my warmth,
to smell the smells, putrid or sweet,
that either way spell life. And doing so,
I realize that it’s me who comes alive,
watching those coming in, those going out.
WHY I WRITE
Unless I write things down I never know
what I think, no less feel, about the world.
I found out first in print that I prefer
white wine to red, the blues to rock,
the winter’s terseness to the spring’s green gab—
conclusions reached in short stories or poems.
Once I, a vegetarian, tried red meat
because a recently divorced woman
on a blind date (in a poem I was writing)
ordered a well-done steak which turned out raw
and bled when she cut into it, a taste
I had to taste in order to describe it.
I’m not kidding: unless I write things down,
I don’t know what I want: long lists of pros
and cons on a bedside pad, love letters
(How else can I be certain I’m in love?),
thank you’s for gifts I never thought I’d use
until I jotted down my gratitude,
rhetorical addresses to a God
who only answers when I write Him down.
As far as I’m concerned the world’s a blur
which each word in a sentence focuses,
as if I were fine-tuning the lenses
on my binoculars from bird to thrush
to Bicknell’s thrush singing in the maple
for lack of pen and paper this spring day.
In short I don’t know I’m alive unless
I’m writing as I’ll only be convinced
—when I am scribbled on some stony epitaph—
that I am gone . . . and the rest is silence.
DID I REDEEM MYSELF?
Did I redeem myself, Mami? Papi?
Was I the native child you dreamed up
as you lay in the foreign bed you’d made
your first and failed exile in New York?
Did I excuse your later desertion,
leaving your friends behind to die? Did I
help
to reframe that choice as sacrifice:
you gave your girls the lives they would have missed
growing up in a double tyranny
of patriarchy and dictatorship?
Did I redeem myself, my sisters, for those nights
I kept you up with Chaucer lullabies?
My love poems at your weddings? My calls
at midnight with a broken heart? And you,
dear lovers whom I mistook for husbands,
do you forgive me for forsaking you?
I heard—or thought I heard—a stronger call.
This love did prove the truest, after all.
And friends, can this be tender for your care?
Have I kept some of my promises here?
But harder still, my two Americas.
Quisqueya, did I pay my debt to you,
drained by dictatorship and poverty
of so much talent? Did I get their ear,
telling your stories in the sultan’s court
until they wept our tears? And you, Oh Beautiful,
whose tongue wooed me to service, have I proved
my passion would persist beyond my youth?
Finally, my readers what will you decide
when all that’s left of me will be these lines?
NOTES
The series “Seven Trees” is for Sara Eichner and Berit Gordon.
“Abbot Academy” is for Ruth Stevenson as well as for
Jean St. Pierre, two dear teachers who trained me at Abbot.
“Grand Baby” is for Naomi Stella Gordon.
“Addison’s Vision” is for Addison Hall.
“Signs” is for Anamie Curlin.
“All’s Clear” is for Susan Bergholz.
“Tom” is for Tom Krueger.
“‘Poetry makes nothing happen’?” is for Jay Parini. The title is a quote from W. H. Auden’s poem “In Memory of W. B. Yeats.” The question mark is mine.
“Looking Up” is for Sara Eichner, inspired by her skyscapes.
“Keeping Watch” is for Mom and Dad.
Some of these poems have been previously published:
“Seven Trees” was first published as a limited edition book (North Andover: Kat Ran Press, 1998).
“By Accident,” in A Poem of Her Own: Voices of American Women Yesterday and Today (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2003).